Unfortunately, voter turnout for Georgia State’s Student Government (SGA) elections was staggeringly low this year. This past SGA election saw a turnout of 1,282 votes out of the goal of at least 6,000 votes.
According to our report, this might have been partially due to a problem with OrgSync, an event management system SGA uses for its voting platform, but this small glitch can’t be the only reason the numbers were so low.
If we take those numbers as a general estimate of voters, we can see that very few students cared to vote for SGA candidates. That’s 1,282 out of roughly of 33,000 students who go to Georgia State. If 6,000 was a compromise, they fell short of even that.
When so few voters choose to vote, it’s a result of a phenomenon called Voter Apathy, which is generally defined by exactly what it sounds like: those who are eligible to vote are disinterested in doing so. That is, Georgia State students just don’t care about elections.
It’s hard work to make an informed decision about who to vote for, and more often than not, people feel like they have more important things to do. Many people end up voting for candidates simply based on whether they’ve been in office before, or based on their popularity.
Because of voter apathy, there is a consistently low voter turnout rate in national elections. And the number seems to be dropping. According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, voting dropped from around 62 percent of United States citizens in 2008 to roughly 58 percent in 2012.
Yet among young voters (aged 18-29) there was, surprisingly, a lot of participation. Nineteen percent of all voters fit within this age group.
Professor Chandler of New York City’s Hunter College attributes voter apathy to a number of factors, including “the way political parties and candidates engage voters.”
In SGA’s case, their failure to engage voters might have to do with their visibility. Just sending out e-mails during the campaigning dates (March 23-April 12, 2015) might not have incentivised voting as much as was originally intended.
It might also have to do with Georgia State’s status as a commuter school. Students might not feel a connection with campus life if they only spend a few hours on campus every week, and therefore would feel very little reason to vote.
Resulting from SGA’s relative invisibility, students don’t know how the organization serves the student body. Of course, one can simply look at their home page to get a cursory look at their campus operations.
There are many things SGA can do to increase their engagement with voters preceding elections, such as meeting with students directly in the courtyard or by holding better-publicized debates that meet before 7:15 p.m. on a weekday, as was the case during this past election.
After personally attending the debates this past year, I saw that the small venue was at much less than full capacity, and those who showed up seemed to be close friends of the candidates. I was also exhausted because I had been at class all day, and found it hard to pay close attention to what was being said.
Yet another phenomenon comes into play when considering candidates lower on the ballot: Voter Fatigue, which is when voters can’t put forth the mental energy enough to care for lower-ballot candidates such as the Vice President for Public Relations and Senators.
During the aforementioned debates, there was a throng of lower-ballot candidates who introduced themselves to the audience by all saying the exact same thing: that they were happy to be there, and that they supported Team I.M.P.A.C.T. (a political organization within SGA that saw a striking uniformity of supporters). After about twenty candidates parroting off the same party line, the debates quickly became tedious.
Given all this, it’s undeniably certain that SGA elections suffer from their share of voter apathy and voter fatigue. Students participating might feel like candidates running for office within SGA lack engagement with the student body and indeed with the responsibilities of the organization itself.
And apathy is hard to combat. How can you get someone to vote when they are certain they would prefer not to, or just don’t care to at all? Besides, what difference does it make anyway?
Well, first off, it makes a lot of difference, as SGA is extremely crucial to the wellbeing of the student body. They act as the voice of the students and as the mediators between us and the school’s administration.
They have deciding power over how student fees are spent, over what restaurants can appear in the cafeterias, and over public events held on campus, among many other things. You know that restaurant in the food court you like so much? Chick-fil-A or that Wok place? Well, it might disappear if the wrong candidate is elected.
It’s up to both SGA and students to reify their connection and incentivise more involvement with student government, SGA by becoming more engaged with students, and students by voting.
Because Georgia State is such a large school, students might feel lost in the crowd, so to speak. But we need to remember we have a voice. Believe it or not, we’re choosing even if we think we’re not participating. By choosing not to vote, we effectively double the vote of someone who votes for the wrong candidate, someone you would hate to see in any form of public office at any point.
This creates a major problem in the voting system. If the voters who know better remain silent, then the vote becomes a popularity contest, as only those with a very close bond with the candidates submit their votes, and the fewer the voters, the more slanted the election becomes.
Unfortunately, this was the case with this past election. I’m not saying that the candidates elected in this past election were subpar, I’m simply outlining the danger of voter apathy and fatigue and how SGA can work to combat this situation.
And though the responsibility rests on SGA’s shoulders some, it’s ultimately up to the voters to find these things out for themselves and to know their responsibilities when they enter the student body.
When we don’t vote, we give up that small reserve of power that we could have had, and passively allow others to make decisions that can affect our college lives immensely.
