Remote voting

Once in a while I hear the media lament the low voter turnout among young people of my age. I promised myself that I would be different. I care because the education I have received at home and at Columbia taught me the importance of this sacred right, unavailable to many. Driven by this sense of duty, I usually go out of my way to show up at polling sites—until two days ago, when I did not vote for the first time because I was tied to New York City and couldn’t cast my vote in New Jersey without an absentee ballot. I did not apply for a ballot two weeks ahead of time because I never thought I would need it. The fact that I—a member of a group that already suffers from low voter turnout for various reasons—was prevented from voting by a bureaucratic procedure when I actually really, really wanted to vote was very upsetting to me.

The idea that I would be physically unable to make it to my town 40 minutes away to vote on a holiday was completely unforeseeable two weeks ago. An absentee ballot, too, was an idea so alien to me that as I was writing this article, I called the Division of Elections and looked up the special section for college voters on its website. Schools often host voter registration sessions to encourage students to vote, but I’ve never seen the issue of absentee ballots raised or emphasized, especially for non-commuting college students. And the group of people who are most disadvantaged by this complicated and annoying system are precisely the college students who live away from home.

The consistently low voter turnout is partly a result of the lack of information and outreach to people with special circumstances such as college students. Local election days are not like Christmas or Thanksgiving—people do not plan months ahead for them, and when many of us finally do get to thinking about election day and realize we need an absentee ballot, it is too late. Columbia is caught in a particularly awkward situation, because even though most students live on campus, many people live close by and go home regularly. Therefore no one thinks about applying for an absentee ballot two weeks before the holiday weekend, when almost everyone is expected to be at home. The absentee ballot system is an inconvenience and a great hindrance to voting. Of course there is going to be low turnout if the system and bureaucracy indirectly prevent people from voting.

But why are mail-in ballots still the only way to cast an absentee ballot in the 21st century? And why do absentee ballots still exist? If we can apply to any college electronically from all over the globe and feel confident about giving out our social security numbers to certain agencies over the Internet, then why can’t the citizens of the United States also vote from anywhere they want on the day of the election? Because voting is such an important process in a democratic nation, it should accommodate the maximum number of people.

Before we can finally disencumber this inefficient system of the absentee ballot, the government should try its best to reach out to its citizens in order to keep the democratic system working. It seems reasonable to argue that the most important interest of a democratic government is to ensure that as many citizens as possible go out to vote. The responsibility lies with the government to educate and inform its citizens so they can participate in the system, and its citizens should be provided with absolutely the best help and service to protect our rights from the government. Yes, I am asking to be pampered—and I believe that I, a citizen of the United States, deserve to be. There is no reason that anyone should be prevented from voting at any time when he or she wishes to vote.

The author is a Barnard College sophomore and a page design associate for Spectator.