Guest Post by Ginny Franks
"Voting is perhaps the most important duty we have as citizens of the United States. But it also is important to remember to vote for the area that we are shaping as students at this University. We are a part of this community, whether we're from Wilmington or Boone.
So register to vote.
It doesn't matter for whom or what you vote. Just do it. It's as simple as that."
– Emma Burgin, Daily Tar Heel columnist and former City Editor
If the State Board of Elections records are right (Disclaimer: they aren't always!), then Emma Burgin didn't vote.
For those of you who were surprised by the abysmal student turnout in municipal elections this year, all it takes is an internet connection and a computer to figure out why. Push aside the rhetoric of "students are our future", "this is our community" and "voting is perhaps the most important duty we have as citizens" spouted from the mouths (and emails) of our student leaders, and we wind up with nothing but the hypocritical repeat of the Paris Hilton "Vote or Die" incident, with Paris Hilton sporting the t-shirt but not the "I Voted" sticker. Or even bothering to register.
Telling people to vote is about as trendy as Emilio Pucci scarves and the Lacoste polos we're sporting, but apparently actually following through and, say, voting is a fashion faux pas for student leaders at UNC.
Again, according to the SBOE records (which I've been assured the busy news elves that make the DTH happen are hard at work verifying), the same people who repeatedly told students to vote didn't vote.
Seth Dearmin voted, but his Student Body Secretary, Neepa Mehta, and Student Body Treasurer, Daneen Furr, didn't. Neither did his "Legislative Link" chair Dane Anderson who, to my knowledge, isn't even registered in the state. We could only find 13 people from his cabinet of over 50 folks who voted in Chapel Hill. (And the "I voted at home!" line doesn't work, because we couldn't find anyone on his cabinet who voted at home either.) So 37 folks on Seth Dearmin's cabinet couldn't find their way to the polls (then again, these are the same folks who can't figure out who to contact about street lights.)
But there are more surprising folks who didn't vote (my "top offenders", if you will):
- Brandon Hodges, the President of the Black Student Movement
- Natalie Murdock, Political Action Committee Chair of Black Student Movement
- Kris Wampler, campus activist and "guy who sued UNC over the Koran book"
- Jordan Selleck, Chair of the College Republicans, who just ran for Chair of their statewide Organization
- J. Robert Austin , the Student Solicitor General
- About 15 members of UNC's Student Congress
- The 37 members of Seth Dearmin's Cabinet
- Derwin Dubose , campus pundit, former DTH Columnist, former Campus Y co-President who posted on his blog telling us to vote
And here are two more UNC officials that I hope have interesting reasons for not voting:
- Diane Bachman , former Town Council Candidate
- Bernadette Gray-Little, Chair of College of Arts & Sciences
If all of these student leaders would have voted, and if each of them would have gotten only 10 friends to vote, we would have more than doubled the student turnout.
Maybe the problem is that students "just don't care," but would it really take that much to make voting fashionable? A little innovation and motivation instead of the same bland pit-sitting and emails is all it would take to make voting more than just something nice to put on your Student Body President platform.
And if there are good reasons for not voting or a serious disconnect with students, why don't student leaders talk about that instead? A serious discussion about voting would be more valuable than the hypocritical "Go Vote!" message of "Do what I say, not what I do." There are a few excuses for not voting (but very few good ones), but I'm betting my money on the fact that most of the folks on my list don't have any excuse at all.
NOTE: Daily Tar Heel Editor Ryan Tuck did a great job turning his staff members out to the polls! Nearly all of his desk editors (from city to university to photos to sports!) turned out. So rest assured that the folks responsible for informing the campus didn't fall into the same "Rock the Vote!" trendy rhetoric that other student leaders did.
Ginny Franks is a senior Communications major at UNC-Chapel Hill from Fayetteville, NC. She has been active with UNC Young Democrats, UNC Student Government and the Carolina Athletic Association and now works with the UNC Association of Student Governments as VP of Legislative Affairs. She was one of the 300 students who voted in 2003 municipal elections and one of the 450 or so who managed to find Morehead Planetarium in 2005.
Issues:
Comments
Tom and Ginny, have you
Tom and Ginny, have you checked to see how many of the outstanding leaders at yesterday's wonderful celebration honoring Rosa Parks didn't vote? If they didn't, what would you say about them as leaders? Oh, and since not being there might be cause for some to assume one is nor supportive or disinterested, I wasn't there because I had to work.
Coach Smith lives in Orange
Coach Smith lives in Orange County but the CH schools, so I don't think there was a race there this year.
The only elections in
The only elections in Chatham this year were municipal in Siler City, Pittsboro, and Goldston. There were no polls open in North Chatham.
Perhaps someone can convince
Perhaps someone can convince me otherwise, but I can't think of one good reason why my voting record has to be public information.
If someone wants to know my voting record I should have the choice of making it public or keeping it private.
Terri, why do you think it is "perfectly reasonable for the state to make these records public"?
In states such as Virginia (where voting history is private) what makes it OK for elected officials, candidates and political committees to access voting records without voter permission?
Fred: You're missing the
Fred:
You're missing the primary issue of what I was doing. It was about student leaders who waxed sanctimonious about voting, but then didn't bother. The other folks were just sidebars in the "hmm, could be interesting, wonder why?" category.
I think that your message is clear. You don't approve of what we did. That's your right, but this discussion is getting less and less productive and I think you're missing my point.
Whether or not voting histories should be public is a separate issue that has little to do with the message about student leaders.
I'm going to sit it out on responding to any more of your posts... it's not to be rude, but it's getting progressively less productive and devolving into something out of the scope of my original argument. Please email me if you have concerns you'd like to address off of OP.
OK-- I thought of one good
OK-- I thought of one good reason. Maybe some day I'll question the validity of election results. Maybe I'll want to call up every voter and confirm that there was no foul play....
Note Ginney that I wrote
Note Ginney that I wrote "Tom and Ginny."
Who introduced the name Scott Maitland, a private citizen, as a non-voter in 2005 on OP? Did he wax sanctimoniously about voting?
Ginny says: "The other
Ginny says: "The other folks were just sidebars in the 'hmm, could be interesting, wonder why?' category."
What is "interesting" about whether Bernadette Gray-Little voted in a municipal election?
The low turnout among young
The low turnout among young people is very troubling, and I don't think the answer is to argue about whether a particular person voted or not, but to think about what we can do to increase access to the polls for all people. The issue of low voter turnout, particularly among people ages 18-24 in North Carolina (400,000 of whom were not even registered in the 2004 election) would definitely be helped by the passage of NC House Bill 851, "Same-Day Registration at One-Stop Sites". The bill allows a person who misses the cut-off for registration (25 days prior to the election) to go to a one-stop voting site, show proper ID, register, and vote. Some form of Same-Day Registration is offered in 7 other states (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Maine, New Hampshire, Wyoming, Idaho and, most recently, Montana) and these states have voter turnout that is 8-15 percentage points above the national average. NC ranks among the worst in voter turnout, in the bottom third of all states in the last several elections. Research shows that Same-Day Registration boosts turnout significantly among young people and students. A study done by Democracy North Carolina, where I work, during the summer of 2005, showed strong support for Same-Day Registration among youth ages 18-24 (including Democrats, Republicans and Indpendents). For more information about Same-Day Registration and our coalition to pass it in NC, visit our website at
http://www.democracy-nc.org/improving/samedayreg.html
> What is
> What is “interesting†about whether Bernadette Gray-Little
> voted in a municipal election?
Eric, I'm not sure that what Ginny and Tom researched necessarily is interesting to you. But it's interesting to me, and likely, interesting to a lot of different people for a lot of different reasons. I don't think there was some sort of implicit conclusion to be drawn by presenting a list of non-voting "leaders." The information is there, and the conclusion is your own to draw. As an interested party, I'm thankful for having this research done for me.
My conclusion, and this shouldn't inherently be anyone elses' unless they draw the same, is that I'm disappointed our municipal election didn't bring in more attention from those who would call themselves leaders on our campus and would seek to influence the direction it takes. In the case of a few individuals, I would be personally disappointed if this information is absolutely correct, because I expected that they voted. I don't have enough faith in the online to call people out individually, so I instead look at the trend.
It's disappointing - nationally, "reported" turnout is something like 20-30% higher than recorded turnout... or in other words, many of the people who didn't vote say they did. I wish that Chapel Hill had been an exception.
Eric, are you really against
Eric, are you really against making public information more public? Who is the arbiter who decides under what circumstances public information can or cannot be used? When does privacy trump the public's right to know?
When you make mention in your blog of past documents drafted by Supreme Court nominees that have the effect of harming that person's cerdibility, do you sit back and ponder whether your actions are ethical? I certainly don't, as I sit in my chair at home and cheer you and others on. I even cheer when the person is someone whose views are closely to my own, because in the end, the truth is outed, and the value of that is enormous.
Without doubt there is a calculus determining the ethical value of divulging information about people in public forums that takes into account (1) the "publicness" of the person, (2) the relevance of the information, and (3) the potential harm in not revealing the information. This equation is balanced against the possible harm to the individual, but that requirement has a necessarily low threshold in a society that values transparency. Essentially, then, the more public the person, and the more relevant the information is to public issues, and the more harm there is in not revealing the information, the greater the need to make that information public.
Churchill (as the anecdote goes) was at a dinner party. The conversation turned to prostitution. A woman confessed that for several million pounds she would probably sleep with a man to whom she was not romantically attached. Churchill turned to her and asked if she would consider doing it for 10 pounds. The visibly shaken woman answered, "Sir, I am NOT a prostitute," to which Churchill responded, "My dear lady, we have already established you ARE one; we are merely haggling over the price."
This anecdote is not exactly on point, but I figured it was good for some comic relief in this charged discussion.
Mary, I used the voting
Mary, I used the voting records during my race for Council to determine "most likely" voters. Why? I only had enough cash (BTW, still raising money) to send 3,000 post cards out. I selected 2500+ folks based on prior voting habits, location and party affiliation (I used a homegrown algorithm). The rest of my mailing went to newly registered voters or folk I knew of but who didn't make the original cut.
Without this information I would've had to send many more mailings out based on some other criteria to hit that same pool of "likely voters". Quite impossible under my campaign's budget. I'd like to think this is one of several amenable reasons for releasing this information.
I don't know why folks are
I don't know why folks are accusing Ginny of a witch hunt, she's merely stating the facts. The NC BoE web site indicates that some people didn't vote. Fact.
James Barrett: there was a city school board election this year, so if you're right about his residence then Dean Smith could have voted in it.
I'm actually more concerned with the potential inaccuracy of the voting records than the fact that they're online. If they're going to be available to candidates (like in VA), then they should be available to everyone!
As someone with a 100% voting record I can tell you it's really not that hard to do, especially if you're at all interested in politics, as the folks on Ginny's list are.
Jason, I take it then that
Jason, I take it then that you'd advise UNC's leaders to issue a press release each election day if they find themselves unable to vote? Surely this is what they'll need to do if these results are to be published each election day.
In what other ways would you like campus leaders proactively to account for themselves, for fear of being publicly shamed?
I can see it now:
"I saw Jim Moeser in the waiting room of a psychiatrist's office. I hope he has an 'interesting reason' for that."
"I saw Neil Pedersen walking out of the porn section at VisArt. I hope he has an 'interesting reason' for that."
"Sally Greene stopped next to me at a red light last night and she was listening to the Michael Savage Show in her car, and smiling. I hope she has an 'interesting reason' for that."
And then, when someone objects: "Hey! I wasn't implying anything, and I'm not saying you should draw any particular inference. That's up to you. I'm just giving you the information."
Come on. If you want to deplore low voter turnout, deplore it. But don't go shaming innocent people.
Will, I would argue that the
Will, I would argue that the reason you mention is probably the single worst reason to make this information public.
Sure, as a candidate you get to spend money more wisely with information about who voted and who didn't. You get to spend it on the people who voted last time and not waste it on people who didn't.
This is a system that dramatically skews candidate expenditures away from the poorest, least educated voters for whom getting to the polls takes the most doing, and toward the wealthiest, best educated voters who can get to work late to vote or leave work early to vote or extend their lunch break to vote or who don't have to miss work at all to vote because they don't vote. It is a system that takes whatever disparate impact race, ethnicity, gender, etc., have on voter turnout and dramatically telescopes that impact.
When I found out that local candidates are able to target their mailings, their house contacts, their phone calls, etc., to people who've voted before, I was astonished. Astonished. I have absolutely no doubt that the result of this system is to make the turnout whiter and richer than it would otherwise be.
I don't think our legal system should be facilitating candidates' efforts to market themselves just to "motivated" voters.
Ruby, you missed the run-off
Ruby, you missed the run-off Democratic Primary on June 4, 1996. You irresponsible cad! ;)
David, you ask: "Eric, are
David, you ask: "Eric, are you really against making public information more public? Who is the arbiter who decides under what circumstances public information can or cannot be used? When does privacy trump the public's right to know?"
I am for the responsible amplification of publicly available information. To take just one example, if a council member got into a domestic dispute that showed up in the police blotter in the Chapel Hill News, I would not be in favor of OP's posting the contents of the police report. Who gets to be the arbiter? Why, we do. That's what we're doing right here. Isn't it?
And you ask: "When you make mention in your blog of past documents drafted by Supreme Court nominees that have the effect of harming that person's cerdibility, do you sit back and ponder whether your actions are ethical?"
Yes. A lot.
Mark, you got me... D'oh!
Mark, you got me... D'oh! ;-)
Wasn't that back when unaffiliated voters couldn't vote in the primary or something?
Eric, I think the names
Eric, I think the names could be completely removed from the list of those who didn't vote, and I would find equal conclusions. It's not a witch hunt, and to me, it's not about individuals (well, except those individuals who assured me they voted and then didn't). If someone told me Eric Muller didn't vote in the recent Lilliput/Brobdingnag race, I would shrug my shoulders. If I was told that UNC law professors have 95% turnout in a race where 10% of the general population voted, I might raise an eyebrow, and think it's "interesting."
That aside, is finding something interesting the same as demanding an interesting reason? Since when did finding interest take on a shaming connotation?
Eric, while the race, gender
Eric, while the race, gender and age of each of the voters is available, their income level is not. I guess I could use the school board's methodology (which tracks house valuation as an indicator of income - not a system I'd use...) to assign likely incomes to the voters. Having done that I guess I could tease out if my list of 2500+ "most likely voters" was skewed wretchedly.
Given this year's general lack of off-campus coverage (at least for the 2nd-tier candidates), I would've been happy to blanket every voter multiple times with pamphlets, CDs, personal visits in order to get my message out - but that was not possible on this candidates budget. I tried to remediate any skew by hanging out at bus stops or talking to folk in the grocery line or canvassing neighborhoods or trolling for voters at various festivals in order to educate as many folk as I could about my campaign. I tried to broaden my reach by attending every forum, meeting and Republican Women's Luncheon (coverage only equaled by Robin and Laurin!). I even spent a few bucks on 10 WCHL ads, expecting to cover a few more bases.
I took plenty of hits for reaching out to the "unlikely to vote" student community. I also reached out to other communities that traditonally don't vote. I even invested time talking to organizations, like Pa'Lante, that cater to folk that can't vote at all. I'd like to think my campaign was not as white bread or blue blood as you think.
But, having done what I could using sweat equity, word of mouth, email list, low cost radio, pure outreach, etc., I was left with doing what every marketeer does - identify likely customers and sell to them. In that I even made some mistakes. For instance, not sending materials to Carol Woods on the belief that my well-attended forum visit would boost my numbers as much as a literature drop.
To target that voting demographic I had to have the BOE data. Alternatives ran $2,000 to $3,000 - more than my total outlay.
Jason, Ginny said this in
Jason,
Ginny said this in her original post:
"And here are two more UNC officials that I hope have interesting reasons for not voting:"
Then she mentioned Bachman and Gray-Little.
Will, if I were a candidate,
Will, if I were a candidate, I'd use the data the same way you did. And the way other candidates do. It'd be foolish not to.
By the way, I know that income information is not available. But I would be *astonished* if turnout rates do not at least roughly reflect a distinction between haves and have-nots.
Why should this information
Why should this information be public? I really don't know but I have a tendency toward thinking most information should be. My biggest concern is that we have citizens who know how to use this and any other information responsibly. Ginny's point was relevant--individual student leaders made a point of urging students to vote and then didn't do so themselves. That seems to me to be a legitimate piece of journalistic reporting. On the other hand, the use of Scott Maitland's record, along with Gray Little and Bachman, I find to be petty and punitive. Context matters.
I applaud Ginny for looking
I applaud Ginny for looking into this and ditto on the need for same-day registration (at least as part of the solution). Oh, and yes, these voter histories on the SBOE website do tend to be incomplete. I'm guessing this happens more often with us folks that are more transient. My on-line voter history only goes back to the General Election of 2002 and I want it stated for the record that I cast a vote, when I was a wee lad of 17, for "Gov. Moonbeam" Jerry Brown in the 1992 N.C. Democratic Primary -- aaahh, youth.
"Candidates Dianne Bachman
"Candidates Dianne Bachman and Sally Greene stressed the importance of encouraging all residents to vote. Bachman said the day before Election Day is, in her opinion, the best day to persuade people to vote."
DTH Archives, 11/4/03
Mark, the phrase was, 'Piety
Mark, the phrase was, 'Piety Derby'. I've copyrighted it.
-Alex
That comment on STP was the
That comment on STP was the funniest damn thing anybody said all fall.
Pages