By Sean Mason
The absentee ballot solves a lot of
problems for 21-year-old Lewis Simms.
"Being able to vote with an absentee ballot has made voting convenient, rather than a problem. I don’t have to worry about missing class to fly home just so I can vote," said Simms of Bridgewater, the president of the Young Republican Club at Notre Dame.
The absentee ballot allows citizens who can’t get to the polls, often because they are away at college or ill and can’t leave their homes, to vote in the election.
The town of Bridgewater issued 302
absentee ballots, 151 of them for college students said Jolie Sprague-Martin,
the assistant town clerk. That’s fewer absentee ballots than during the 2012
election, Sprague-Martin said.
"We issued almost double the amount of absentee ballots to college students during the 2012 presidential election. I think this is because younger voters care much more about the presidential election, rather than passing questions about their state. Many registered voters who are still away at
school did not apply for an absentee ballot," Sprague-Martin said.
Twenty-year-old student Jackson Ellis of Bridgewater, who attends the University of New Hampshire, said he thought absentee ballots were only available for the Presidential election. Ellis said he voted using an absentee ballot in the 2012 Presidential election.
"I had no idea you could get an absentee ballot for non-presidential elections. In 2012, I got like 10 phone calls telling me to apply for one. This time I got nothing," Ellis said.
The absentee ballot takes away the fun of voting, said 20-year-old Claire Myers of Bridgewater, who attends the University of Rhode Island. The best part about voting is physically going to the polls, said Myers, who has opted not to take part in voting this year.
"I loved going to the polls. I had always wanted to go when I was younger. In 2012 I was finally able to go and it felt like a rite of passage," said Myers.
Some people who called for an absentee ballot were turned down because the deadline had passed for them to register as a voter.
James White, a 19-year-old freshman at North Carolina State, said he would have filled out an absentee ballot, but he forgot to register to vote.
"Registering to vote was at the bottom of my to-do list because I was getting ready for college cross-country," White, a Bridgewater resident, said.
Preparing to leave for an out-of-state college is very time consuming and it pushes things that are down the road to the bottom of your priorities, White said.
"I am sure that if I had gone to a local school, I would have registered to vote in time. I wouldn’t have had to worry about as much stuff and it would have been more of an urgent thing," White said.
Seth Wilde, an 18-year-old freshman at the University of Maine from Bridgewater, said he doesn’t care about voting.
"I think I am in the majority when I say that young people don’t care about voting, and those that do are lying," Wilde said.
A 2014 study, "Young-Adult Voting: An analysis of Presidential Elections, 1964-2012" by Thom File, notes that the percentage of 18-29 year old voting age citizens has increased from 39.6 percent in 1996 to 45 percent in 2012.
The study notes that Massachusetts residents aged 18-29 vote at a higher rate than the national average. They rank tenth on the national average list.
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