I saw a sign in the Howard H. Baker Center for Public Policy earlier this week advertising an event to “make voting popular.” The poster was pink, and the background depicted a scene from “Mean Girls.” To be honest, seeing the poster made me angry. My anger was not in any way directed towards the Baker Center’s efforts to increase voter turnout among students, but stemmed from the fact that such an event is necessary to begin with.
My Facebook and Twitter feeds are filled with people making statements about politics, discussing both the candidates running and the issues that are being debated in the upcoming midterm elections. I’ve been wondering what fraction of the students that make these kinds of posts actually casts a shadow on a voting booth. This skepticism is rooted in my experience that too many outwardly-opinionated students don’t voice their opinions where it counts: on a ballot.
The past few weeks have held debates about the proposed Amendment 1 to the Tennessee constitution, compared the candidates vying for state Senate seats and have held parties celebrating the end of Stacey Campfield’s absurd stunts on the Senate floor. Just for the sake of curiosity, I try to end said conversations by asking my acquaintance if he or she is registered to vote, and the number of “No” answers I’ve received in response is disheartening. There used to be time for me to encourage non-voters to register immediately, but those deadlines have passed. Maybe I should just stop asking now to preserve my own sanity.
Why wouldn’t you vote? University students seem to be more exposed to the current political events and their implications more than the general population, simply as a result of being on a campus where there’s an entire department and center for public policy dedicated to starting and moderating political discussions. Informed voters are the ones we want filling up our state’s ballot boxes, and yet it seems as if the efforts of those raising political awareness in this population are wasted.
Quite frankly, when you give up the opportunity to vote, you give up the right to complain about anything that happens in your political jurisdiction. Voting is the one chance you get to choose the representatives and legal issues that best serve your needs. It’s the gateway to political involvement, the next step being communicating with your elected representatives on issues that are important to you. Voting is not only a right associated with being a U.S. citizen, it’s a duty that we all owe to our country. The only hope we have of improving our government, of improving the political process and of fully benefiting from being a citizen of our respective city, county, state and nation is to make our needs known.
Students of a public, state-funded university should feel a heightened sense of the importance of voting, as our state legislators hold the purse strings of an increasingly smaller chunk of UT’s budget. These issues and more are being discussed at every election, and by refusing to vote, one forfeits the opportunity to take part in that discussion. In this election alone, the autonomy of the individual in decisions related to personal health with the proposed Amendment 1, the gubernatorial election and the status of state and national representative seats are on the ballot.
We’ve got everything to lose and nothing to gain from refusing to vote. To do so would be an act of sheer laziness, ignorance and would forfeit your right to complain about the decisions of a governmental body that you had no hand in shaping. Vote now, and claim your voice in developing the future of your government.
Kenna Rewcastle is a senior in college scholars. She can be reached at [email protected].
