By Emily Ann Morton
I voted today because I wanted to exercise my right as an American to vote. Yesterday our class made interactive posters for people to write why or why not they are voting in this election. Until now, I had not been at all politically active, so making the posters made me feel like I’d actually done something to contribute to the activism surrounding this election. For the most part, students and other passersby were willing to take part in our project; all we asked of them was to write down why they are voting or have voted, or why they are not voting.
An overwhelming amount of people were in fact planning to vote or had already voted in this election. When prompted to write WHY they were voting, the resulting responses were varied. Some had statements along the lines of “because I’m supposed to,” or, “because my vote counts,” while others said things like “fundamental human and civil rights for all,” and “because I care about our country and the environment!” What I found interesting was that the majority of the people who owned up to not voting had legitimate excuses, like “I’m not a U.S. Citizen” or “My absentee ballot was sent to the wrong state,” which shows that of the people we encountered on the Pomona campus, if they were registered to vote and came across no roadblocks in the process, did indeed vote. It is interesting to question how our results would have differed on another campus at the 5Cs. As it is common knowledge that Pomona is one of the more politically active campuses leaning toward the liberal side, it would be interesting to see how many students from Claremont McKenna, for example, are voting this year, given the general differences in political standing among the campuses.
Although I don’t think that the class’ mini activist stunt skewed non-voters into actually voting in this election, it was nice to see how many college students like me are voting, because it motivated me to actually go to the polls and vote. I had been planning on I voted today because I wanted to exercise my right as an American to vote. Yesterday our class made interactive posters for people to write why or why not they are voting in this election. Until now, I had not been at all politically active, so making the posters made me feel like I’d actually done something to contribute to the activism surrounding this election. For the most part, students and other passersby were willing to take part in our project; all we asked of them was to write down why they are voting or have voted, or why they are not voting.
An overwhelming amount of people were in fact planning to vote or had already voted in this election. When prompted to write WHY they were voting, the resulting responses were varied. Some had statements along the lines of “because I’m supposed to,” or, “because my vote counts,” while others said things like “fundamental human and civil rights for all,” and “because I care about our country and the environment!” What I found interesting was that the majority of the people who owned up to not voting had legitimate excuses, like “I’m not a U.S. Citizen” or “My absentee ballot was sent to the wrong state,” which shows that of the people we encountered on the Pomona campus, if they were registered to vote and came across no roadblocks in the process, did indeed vote. It is interesting to question how our results would have differed on another campus at the 5Cs. As it is common knowledge that Pomona is one of the more politically active campuses leaning toward the liberal side, it would be interesting to see how many students from Claremont McKenna, for example, are voting this year, given the general differences in political standing among the campuses.
Although I don’t think that the class’ mini activist stunt skewed non-voters into actually voting in this election, it was nice to see how many college students like me are voting, because it motivated me to actually go to the polls and vote. I had been planning on voting the whole time, but seeing how many people were voting made me more excited to go out and vote myself. It feels good to take action.
