Get Out of My Vote

By Luther Ray Abel

Friday, October 28, 2022

 

Get Out the Vote is well underway, complete with “Did you vote?” banners, notifications, and communications from civic organizations such as, um, Facebook, all-you-can-eat buffets, and the neighborhood CBD shop. Instagram will help you find out whether you are registered and send you to the page from which you can request a ballot.

 

On campuses, various groups do much the same, “raising awareness” about voting and lowering the barrier for student engagement to subterranean levels with registration efforts and stroll-to-the-polls groups. Efforts to make Election Day a campus holiday — neglecting schoolwork in order to nudge young people into a booth — smack of political prioritization.

 

This needs to stop. What really stokes my ire is when university administrators and faculty get directly involved in student voting: This is self-serving and abuses the student–professor and student–staff relationships.

 

First, there is the rank partisan interest of the faculty. It does not take a statistician of great skill to suss out that as more college students vote, more votes are cast — in relative terms — for the party that most of the faculty prefers. A faculty member might defend himself from accusations of partisanship by claiming, “I would take any student to the polls, no matter his political leanings,” but this would seem like a pursuit of self-interest garbed in virtue. For every Republican- or third-party-voting student escorted to the polls by faculty, three to four students will likely vote for precisely the people the faculty member most wants to win.

 

Furthermore, I’m skeptical of how many faculty members would volunteer to walk with an outspoken Republican student to the polls, as progressivists would see this as aiding and abetting a racist, xenophobic — yada, yada, yada — right-wing candidate.

 

But let us say, for argument’s sake, that a student body is split perfectly down the middle in terms of partisan affiliation so that all votes cast would result in a net-zero advantage to either major party. Even then, I think it would be an abuse of authority for faculty to take students to the polls — as I have anecdotally observed — or otherwise prompt them to vote. There is an inherent power imbalance between faculty and student, as well there should be, for it is the role of instructors to correct, grade, and illuminate the products of their students’ minds.

 

Faculty are rightfully held in high regard by the student body. Professors evaluate students’ performance and academic success, write letters of recommendation in their behalf, and in so many other ways stand to affect their futures. So, when a pupil strolls to the polls with a professor from whom the student may someday need something, might that not alter how the student votes?

 

We often talk about voter intimidation coming from the right (the little-old-lady poll-watchers who presumably have brass knuckles in their pockets with which to thump Democrat voters); yet there is a similar means of intimidation (albeit not physical) undertaken by the left.

 

“But, Luther,” you might be saying, “is this irritation with how voting operates at universities such as your alma mater not stemming from your political desires?” Yes and no, aware and intelligent reader. No, in that even if a student body resembled that of Liberty University in Virginia — a private Christian university with a conservative faculty and administration — and it would ostensibly benefit “my side,” I would make precisely the same arguments against faculty involvement in student voting. But, also, yes, this argument has elements of self-interest, as faculty no longer taking students to the polls may somewhat reduce votes cast for left-wing candidates. You got me there; my ingenious plot to enthrall the ten minds who might read my work is now undone.

 

A suggestion: Have only student groups handle the ferrying of fellow students to and from the polls. While many of these groups have obvious partisan desires, too, I think it would be better for peers to work these matters out among themselves than to introduce the power dynamics that faculty involvement entails into the mix.

 

As a last note, you need not vote. Everyone and their Nana Jan will tell you that it is “so important,” but it’s not all the time. If you find a candidate suitably appealing to your politics, cast that ballot. And, if you’re put off by the selection available, don’t. The ability to abstain from elections is a freedom in itself, one not enjoyed by all Western democracies. By staying home, you’re communicating to all parties that what they are selling does not interest you, and that perhaps they need to adjust to accommodate you.