Tuesday marked T-minus four weeks until midterm elections. Students chatter about national politics plenty. Yet, state and local politics gets ignored here like NCAA student-athlete policies.
Bad move, as we now know, right? Upon crossing the 18-year-old threshold, and even more especially upon entering the workforce, buying a home and having children, you realize that in many ways, state and local governments are the most pertinent and involved in our lives.
In terms of voter statistics, young people are defined as being between 18 and 29 years old. Statistics show we suck at voting. In the 2006 midterm elections, only 24 percent of us voted, and that definitely doesn’t guarantee that national, state and local offices were all voted on by each voter. We made up only 13 percent of voters in the last midterms. No wonder this country can still discriminate against youth.
Why do we resist registering to vote here? It’s like a 5-year-old defiantly trying to disobey mother and not brush teeth before bed. Undergrads spend a majority of the year here. Most graduate students spend the entire year here. So many will feel a stronger connection to their “other” home. But you’ve got to let go of your hometown voter registration — are you really that attached? Your hometown’s local governments have no sway here, but this one here has plenty.
Other than our practically powerless student body president (more accurately, a lobbyist), you have no vote in the University administration governing your bubble known as your UNC home.
Town councils and county commissions have the luxury of not having to appease an entire state or nation. With fewer over-arching policies, many can be easier to implement. You’re more likely to have our mayor and town council rather than President Barack Obama and Governor Bev Perdue affect your Franklin Street Halloween celebration (the real figures, not the costumed ones who might puke on your own costume).
“Fine Sam, I’ll register and vote for local races. But why should I care about the school board? I don’t have children.” None that you know of.
Even if childless, they’re important. First of all, it’s good to get a rough idea of how the board works and makes decisions. Second, you never know if you might stay in the area. Board policies, such as for school assignment, can last for years after passage. The policies in place when your child starts school could have been set by the fall of a gavel at the exact same time you were drunkenly conceiving your child in Davis Library.
The war over Wake County’s school assignment policy is a great example, particularly given that voter turnout in that election was only 11.4 percent. If all of the people protesting had turned out to vote, they wouldn’t need to protest, nonetheless feel the need to break the law via civil disobedience at school board meetings.
