Low voter turnout is not simply a national problem, a statewide problem or a municipal problem this election cycle; UNM felt it too.
Only 682 undergraduate students voted in the recent Associated Students of UNM Senate elections. It marked a sharp decrease from previous years and is an alarmingly dismal number considering this school has 20,251 undergraduate students. That means only 3.37 percent voted.
Read that again: 3.37 percent turnout for an organization tasked with representing the University’s undergraduates, an organization that is supposed to lobby and advocate for students, an organization that decides how student fees are spent.
This voter apathy is a huge concern. Even if this semester’s number of voters matched last fall’s — the highest fall semester turnout since 2005 — it is still only an 8.42 percent turnout among UNM’s undergraduates.
ASUNM Vice President Jenna Hagengruber called it a fluke that voter turnout was so low, and there is something to that. To many students, the ASUNM Senate elections seemed to come out of nowhere. Not a lot of students knew the election was coming up until they saw polling places in the SUB, Dane Smith Hall or other locations on campus.
Hagengruber said no one particular party is to blame for the turnout, but the efforts to inform students of the upcoming election clearly did not suffice. Hagengruber lauded the candidates for their campaign work, and there is no reason to discount the candidates’ attempts to talk to students and discuss their ideas and concerns. Yet there remained a disconnect with students, as the voter turnout shows. Not enough messages resonated with students to join this election process.
By the time election day rolled around and people saw the polling stations, students who knew nothing of the candidates saw only faces and names. Certainly, polling officials cannot answer questions about candidates, but how can a voter make an intelligent decision about who to vote for without knowing anything? It is akin to this past midterm election and the ballots featuring so many judicial candidates. Who are all these people, anyway?
Other factors certainly come into play. Coming off a national midterm election compounds the problem and leads to confusion when an ASUNM Senate candidate asks an undergrad if he or she voted. Fall 2012 — another national election year — saw a dip in ASUNM voter participation as well, though not as steep.
Being a commuter campus certainly does not help the process, with students staying on campus only until their classes are finished then leaving. It’s the same situation with limited student activity participation.
The Daily Lobo assumes a portion of the blame as well. Aside from the advertisements published about the elections from October until the election, the Daily Lobo newsroom did not adequately inform readers who the candidates were or otherwise announce that the election was coming up. Like most other students, the ASUNM election came up out of nowhere following a heavily covered state election. We could have and should have done a better job.
Regardless of ASUNM’s or the Daily Lobo’s share of accountability here, the students themselves demonstrated a concerning lack of interest in participating in the University’s election process. This does not come as much surprise when looking at these national trends. National voter turnout reached the lowest marks since World War II.
It is cliché, but it is said that universities are supposed to prepare students for the real world. Participation, involvement and civic duties should be a part of that development. If students choose not to join the process to choose representatives on their behalf in this university setting, then what does that say about their future political involvement?
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We implore you, students. Get more involved.
