By Emily LePain
Murphy News Service
With midterm elections next Tuesday, eligible people all over the country have the opportunity to exercise their right to vote.
Minnesota has one of the highest rates of voter turnout in the country. In 2008, 78 percent of those eligible to vote did so in the presidential election, and some Minnesota districts have more than 90 percent of eligible voters participate. But in Minnesota’s 2010 midterm election, voter turnout of people ages 18-29 was only 34.6 percent.
So why do so few college-age students choose not to vote?
“College students typically don’t vote for a few reasons,” Paul Goren, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, said. “Many students go to school out of state, and often don’t register to vote in their current location or don’t know how to fill out an absentee ballot.”
Registration is important in raising the turnout for college-age students. In 2008, 87 percent of 18-24 year-old college students in the U.S. voted. More than 25 percent of college students said in 2010 they didn’t register to vote because they either didn’t know how or missed the registration deadline.
College-age kids tend to be more transient, Goren said, and that can also affect voter turnout.
“Transient populations or people who aren’t tied down to their local communities, tend to participate in politics a lot less because they haven’t yet established roots in their local communities,” Goren said. “College students often fall into the transient category.”
Voting is a fundamental part of this country’s governmental process, and while college-age students may show interest in presidential elections, it’s the smaller, more local, elections that could use their focus.
“Smaller elections have more of a direct effect on the constituents than larger-scale elections,” Brighid Burkhalter, a freshman at Augsburg College, said. “The officials elected in the upcoming election will have influence on the local issues that affect our day-to-day lives.”
But choosing to participate in the democratic process makes a difference.
“It’s our duty as citizens to use our power to vote,” Julia Holmes, a sophomore at the University of Minnesota, said. “We need our leaders to reflect us, and that can’t happen unless we vote. And if you don’t, there’s a chance of someone being in office who chooses to do things you don’t believe in.”
“Voting matters because we are so extremely lucky to have the right to do so,” Burkhalter said. The chance that we have to live and participate in a democracy is so taken for granted, especially among the younger generation that’s coming of age now. And it’s one our only opportunity to actually do something about the world we live in.”
For more information on how to register or where to vote on election day, visit https://www.lib.umn.edu/vote.
Reporter Emily LePain is a journalism student at the University of Minnesota.