In hopes of preventing student frustration on Nov. 4, the RU Voting Coalition and its allies are working hard to make Election Day run smoother for young voters.
Busch and Livingston campus students have it easy when it comes to finding their polling locations: All they have to do is take a stroll to their respective student centers. But students on the College Avenue and Cook/Douglass campuses as well as off-campus students must consult a map to navigate their ways to the polls.
“People always ask me, ‘Where do I go?’ ‘How do I get there? ‘How do I know if I’m registered?’ every day, and people really need to know this information, ” said Crystal Jackson, a School of Arts and Sciences first-year student.
Many New Brunswick residents will have to go out of their way to vote — some traveling miles out of their way to vote at their allocated polling locations.
Voters living in the Ten Landing Lane Apartments on Landing Lane would ideally travel less than a mile to the closest polling location near them — a mere walk through Buccleuch Park to the New Brunswick Senior Citizen Resource Center on the corner of Huntington and Wyckoff streets. But with the polling locations set up as they are, the apartment residents would have to travel an extra five blocks to the Lincoln Elementary School on Bartlett Street.
Some Newell Apartment residents have it even worse off, as residents of apartments 25-64, 129-204 and 229-252 on Cook campus must travel around 2.3 miles to Parsons School in North Brunswick, a route not serviced by any bus route.
Affiliates with RU Voting, a part of the Eagleton Institute of Politics’s Youth Political Participation Program, claim to encourage University students to pay attention to politics, register to vote and turn out on Election Day.
Some members of the non-partisan effort, who run in partnership with the Rutgers University Office of Student Affairs, the student governing associations and various other student organizations such as Empower Our Neighborhoods and New Jersey Public Interest Research Group Student Chapters, say the way polling locations are distributed are a means to deter students from voting.
“It’s a blatant attempt to suppress the student vote,” said Steven Perez, a Rutgers College senior. “It is pretty ridiculous.”
Perez said the city discourages students from voting in this year’s election because he theorizes students who vote this year will be more likely to vote in upcoming elections — a possibility that would threaten the city next year with the hopeful ward petition on the coming year’s ballot.
“We probably will see student voter suppression because I don’t think the city wants there to be a habit of student voting,” Perez said.
Jackson would agree, saying a student vote is a means for students to seize power.
“If you think about it, would they want the students to be in charge?” Jackson said. “The city wants to be in charge, and by doing this, I think it’s their way of keeping power.”
Despite a confusing polling location system, coalition advocates are making strides to help students get to the polls and get the information they need to vote.
Jackson said part of the coalition’s initiative, on top of registering voters earlier in the semester and over the summer, is to ensure voters follow through.
“We got 6,000 people registered to vote, and now we’re trying to get those people to actually come out vote, and that is what our focus is,” Jackson said.
She said among the coalition’s efforts, members will continue to table until Election Day, offering information about voting. She said members will also call people who registered to answer any questions and encourage friends to text other friends about getting out the vote.
Perez said one advantage students should take advantage of is filling out an absentee ballot. A voter may apply for an absentee ballot by completing an Absentee Ballot Application and mailing the application to the county clerk by mail up to seven days prior to the election, or a voter may also apply in person to the county clerk until 3 p.m., the day before the election, on Nov. 3.
Perez said this is a useful means to vote, since New Jersey is not a state that officially allows early voting, and voting with an absentee ballot is his idea of the closest thing to it.
“We’re going to encourage people to do the early voting, which is very easy, and I actually already voted last week,” Perez said. “It would be as if you were doing an absentee ballet, minus the wait. It took me less than 20 minutes, and it’s like doing an easy fill out test.”
Perez said despite the difficulties students may face on Election Day, voters should not become discouraged and blame the inconveniences on the democratic process.
“I think it’s too important to not take seriously, and if people are getting desensitized, it’s only because of the politics behind voting and not really the act of voting,” Perez said.
Volunteers work to ensure students get out to polls
Published: Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Updated: Wednesday, October 29, 2008
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