The November elections will be the first time many students will be voting and many of them have said that this is not only exciting, but also confusing and intimidating.
Nov. 6 was election day for the gubernatorial and local elections. Students were given the day off to vote in the midterm election.
For those students who were unable to go home and vote in person, Winthrop mailed their absentee ballots for free.
Olivia Phillips, a freshman human development and family studies major, was one of the many students who chose to vote absentee.
“I would have much rather enjoyed going and actually voting and getting to press all the little buttons, but it was okay. It gave me time to sit back and research all the candidates, so I didn’t have to go on impulse,” Phillips said.
The midterms marked Phillips’ first time voting. She said that she felt as though she had a voice in society.
“I felt empowered and that I was contributing to the community and that I actually had a voice for once. There’s people that love to complain about what goes on in society but if you’re not voting, you’re not contributing to it, so how can you complain about it?” Phillips said.
Emma Lindenberg, a freshman integrated marketing communications major, said that voting for the first time felt like she was contributing to the community.
“[Voting was] invigorating. It was cool. It felt like I was an adult and I was making a difference in the world, one vote at a time,” Lindenberg said.
She opted to vote absentee in person. She was able to cast her vote before election day by going to her district’s registration office and voting in person.
“I was really excited to vote before I came here, but I think Winthrop made a really big deal about voting. They brought in local candidates, so I thought that was cool,” Lindenberg said.
Faculty, staff and student organizations all worked to prepare students for the election. The university offered registration drives, forums, debate screenings, tablings, to even driving students to the polling places on election day.
Many students have said that this was very helpful to encouraging them to vote, but it is still very intimidating to actually go out and cast their vote.
Ryne Courtney, a freshman biology major, said that as a first time voter, figuring out who was on the ballot was daunting for her.
“There’s so much information out there and it’s so hard to start. I went online to try and start sorting through, what exactly are we voting for,” Courtney said.
Courtney also said that her parents influenced her to go out and vote, despite their own personal beliefs.
“I want to vote, my mom doesn’t really vote, but my dad does, so my mom’s opinion is that it doesn’t really matter who [you] vote for because everybody else is going to vote for the other person. I feel like it’s important,” Courtney said.
Mason Vujicic, a sophomore pre-engineering major and first time voter, offered similar sentiments about the importance of voting.
“Voting helps make the country the place you want it to be. Voting does matter and if everyone gets to vote then the country becomes more of what they want it to become,” Vujicic said.
