I will begin by qualifying this story: I’m trying to plant the seeds of political passion within myself, and as a result, some would call the series of actions that follow irrational. Regardless, I believe — and, thankfully, my friends also believe — that the voices we are given in our democracy to select our government are worth too much to be left unused.
Just a look at the cemetery in Arlington, Va., should remind one of the prices paid to protect American rights, to provide a right to self-governance. The 15th and 19th Amendments, fought for by suffrage movements over multiple decades, should serve as a reminder of the importance of voting. Personally, my grandfather’s military service during World War II is plenty of reason to make sure I vote in the elections; without people like him who earned this right for both you and me, we may not be Americans voting in the United States elections. Our votes are a symbol of thanks to them.
Being that ignorance is not an excuse, it was my mistake in misreading the instructions published in this very paper the week before Election Day as to the proper method of voting in Broome County; one must either register in B.C. or request an absentee ballot in order to vote in the elections here. I would find this out at about 1 p.m. on the day of Nov. 4 in the Susquehanna Room while attempting to get into the voting booths with a friend, who was under the same impression. We assumed that somewhere in between the government and Binghamton University’s administration, someone would have figured out that the thousands of students living on campus would need an easy way to vote. Yet despite this simple logic, when students who were not registered as Broome County voters reached the balloting desk, we were turned away under the premise that we were still registered to vote in our hometowns — and not in Broome County.
By 4 p.m., after calling CNN to complain and shortly thereafter reaching the Broome County Board of Elections and New York City Board of Elections to discuss the voting situation, it dawned on me that the only way to vote would be a last minute adventure down to New York City. With the next Short Line bus leaving at 4:30 p.m., my last chance to hit the polls before they closed at 9 p.m. appeared to involve leaving within half an hour. Quickly contacting my foreign language professor and receiving his blessings to skip class the following day in order to vote, I gathered the occupants of my suite’s couch and we jetted from College-in-the-Woods up to the Mountainview College parking lot. Through the Nature Preserve and into Ryan’s car we ran (insert sarcastic thank you to the BU administration for barring parking in our community at the oddest times of day and overnight). Once buckled in, our quintet set off racing to the bus depot. By 4:33 p.m. we arrived at our destination, barely missing the Short Line, but by luck catching a Greyhound 20 minutes later, allowing me to eventually cast my ballot by 8:30 p.m. in Manhattan.
Now, I have acknowledged that my ignorance in regards to the rules about voting in Binghamton is nothing but my own fault, but I will also confess that it is beyond reason that from all levels of our government, with all the employees working for the Board of Elections, no one could think to allow students a convenient way to vote in the national elections without renouncing voter registration in one’s hometown to re-register in Broome County. Simply providing absentee balloting for the students would serve this purpose; as college students, we deserve outright and reliable access to vote without being forced to register our residences in a county we do not call home or to request thousands of absentee ballots en masse. Another problem with the latter is that voters who request absentee ballots do not always receive them in time for the election, while others find the task of having to mail an absentee request to their elections board, receive their ballot weeks later and then re-mail them while going to a college away from home too troublesome to be worth the effort.
The thought that a new generation of educated citizens is being disenfranchised by the powers that be in both our government and BU administration is ridiculous; while both may take comfort in the authority they currently hold, they should learn to fear the stain of incompetence taking hold of their image.