Hassall-free Friday | Confessions of a non-voter

I have a confession to make: I am 21 years old and have never voted for any kind of elected office, ever. It’s not entirely my fault. Not being American means I couldn’t vote in the 2008 presidential election. Being overseas meant voting in the New Zealand election of that same year would have involved complicated special-ballot rules that I didn’t have the time to work out. At the Anglican boarding school I attended for five years we didn’t elect student leaders; the teachers just appointed prefects. Yes, it was exactly like Harry Potter.

However, I have had other opportunities. I was at home and eligible to vote at the last Auckland City Council election, yet like 60 percent of my fellow Aucklanders, I failed to fill out a mail-only ballot despite a very long window to return it. In fact, there’s another council election going on right now I could be filling out a ballot for. Much, much more important than all that, I’ve never voted for anything at Penn. Although I once stood in what I thought was an Undergraduate Assembly voting line, the line actually turned out to be for free food.

At least on that last count I am not alone. The major question leading up to last year’s UA Referendum that instituted a directly elected president and vice president was not “how will people vote,” but rather whether or not participation would reach the necessary 20 percent threshold for the result to be valid. According to a Daily Pennsylvanian article, in 1995 only 13.6 percent of students showed up for a similar vote. Matt Amalfitano, a College senior and the first UA president, wrote in an e-mail that the referendum allows “students to make more of a direct connection to their school-wide leadership.” But based on the fact that voter turnout remained constant in UA elections last spring, clearly a lot of people don’t value the democratic process very much at all.

According to Wharton senior and Nominations and Elections Committee Chairman Nick Greif, the quality of the voters matters over the quantity. “The level of participation is acceptable in my mind so long as those involved are motivated and knowledgeable, be that 10 percent or 100 percent,” he wrote in an e-mail.

But can we, the great non-voters, simply be dismissed as apathetic? Do we not care about the issues? Do we even know what they are? It is certainly possible that there are a lot of people for whom those things are true, but that doesn’t describe me, nor many of my non-voting friends.

My experience is that people vote when they believe doing so can achieve something for them. Participation in New Zealand local elections is low because most people question local government’s usefulness, and whether elections will have an impact on them. To be honest, I have only the vaguest idea what student government does at Penn. Regardless of what services it provides, I have, in my time here, never experienced any meaningful shift in my situation or activities that could be traced to the outcome of an election — including last year’s referendum.

So should we abandon elections for student government altogether? Not necessarily. (Though I’d like to reiterate at this stage that I have excellent prefecting experience) While I’m fine with the status quo, there is an easy fix. Give student government more power. I don’t care about UA elections because the outcome is unlikely to impact me. Turn the dial on that institution’s power up to 11, and I might actually pay attention. Show me that not expressing my preferences can cost me, and that voting can bring me benefits, and I’ll carve out some time to do so. Until that happens, expect more DP stories about the mad rush to get 20 percent of students to vote in a referendum.

Luke hassall is a College senior from Auckland, New Zealand. His e-mail address is hassall@theDP.com. Hassall-free Fridays appears on alternate Fridays.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.