Right or responsibility? A look at why students don’t vote
By Crystal Abrell | Opinion Editor
With the current election just around the corner, college students are bombarded with the words: “make a difference, vote or die, exercise your rights and vote!” These words are practically shoved down college student’s throats, so why are students not voting?
According to an Oct. 18 web site article by CNN, it’s against the law for colleges and universities to fail to encourage student voting. The Higher Education Act of 1998 requires colleges to provide voter registration forms to every enrolled student or risk losing their federal funding.
With so much voter encouragement surrounding students, there should be no reason why less than 50 percent of college students are voting.
Instead of finding all the reasons why we should vote, maybe we should look at why students don’t vote. Some reasons can be bigger than others, but there are many factors that could shy students away from taking the initiative and registering to vote.
A main reason why students might not vote is they feel uneducated on politics and feel they are not informed enough to vote. This could be due to the lack of encouragement in political interest in our younger years. If students feel they do not know the candidates, voting is not a priority.
Another reason why students are not voting is some don’t know how. Students are not informed of who can vote, how to vote, where and when they can vote, what the cut off dates to register are and what type of registration is needed to vote. Instead, students find themselves procrastinating or pushing it aside.
Some students decide not to vote because they do not like the candidates in any of the parties. The question then becomes, why force yourself to choose between two candidates you consider unfavorable? Many college students feel that because they do not agree with every opinion a certain candidate might have, they might as well not vote for anyone at all if they are not completely persuaded with the candidates ideas and beliefs.
Other students could feel as though the government, and the democratic system, has let them down. With high gas prices, unaffordable tuition and little government funding for schools, it is hard for college student to feel positive about the candidates that represent us.
I believe one of the biggest reasons why students don’t vote is because they do not feel that their one vote can actually make a difference. It can sometimes be hard to think in such a large scale. In reality, if more people voted it could change everything. The minority of society determines who will govern our country; imagine if the majority of our society was voting.
College students could also possibly feel that the elections are rigged. So to them, it’s pointless to vote because nothing will change. This could lead again to the feeling that their vote does not really count for much.
Other than the fact that registering to vote is not as convenient as ordering a pizza, college kids have to tendency to be lazy and procrastinate.
I feel one of the main problems in our youth and our generation is we did not live through the period in time when voting was not a right. Many Americans are ungrateful and unappreciative of what our founding fathers and women have fought so hard for. The right to vote.
We forget about the suffrage that African-American citizens, women, and many others went through in order to get their voices heard. Many innocent civilians gave their lives in order for people like us, college students, to vote.
There are so many people in other countries that would die to have the right to vote, yet we just simply consider it a choice. Believe it or not, way back when there was a time when college students signed a petition in order to get the voting age lowered in order for students to have a say in the current election.
The 26th amendment was passed during the Vietnam War to change the voting age from 21 to 18. The issue raised by college students was: if we are old enough to die for our country, we should be old enough to vote for our commander-in-chief.
We have lost grip of the rights our country was based on. Voting is a right, which makes it our responsibility.
