The importance of voting
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Howdy folks! Many of you may or may not be aware that Geneseo is having its mayoral election next week on Tuesday, Mar. 15. Many of us will be home during that time, and will need an absentee ballot to vote, assuming you are registered to vote in Geneseo in the first place. Most Geneseo students probably do not care who becomes mayor of Geneseo as many of you likely do not live in Geneseo full-time—after all, why should I care if I don’t live here permanently?
While you may not live here permanently, the reality is that you likely spend most of your year in Geneseo. Each semester is approximately four months, so the average student spends eight months in Geneseo, and four months wherever it is they happen to lug their bags when Geneseo kicks everybody out.
This doesn’t mean that the politics and elections of wherever your permanent residence is isn’t important—rather, this means that you should also be paying attention to what is happening in Geneseo. Do you know the candidates? Do you know what initiatives they support? Do you know how they will affect you?
A lot of the students I have talked to don’t really seem to care about what is happening in the Village of Geneseo, but what happens in the Village affects so much of student and campus life. How often do you visit a restaurant or some other business on Main Street? Do you wish businesses in Geneseo were more sustainable? Do you wish that one pothole on that one road would get repaired because this is the third time this week you’ve run over it and with your luck, just one more time will break your car?
Maybe you would like to see more student engagement with the community. Maybe you would like to see more service projects and volunteer opportunities, or see student clubs and organizations doing things on Main Street. These are all things that some of the candidates for this year’s Mayoral election care about.
Did you know that there are over 4,500 students enrolled at SUNY Geneseo? That is more than half the population of Geneseo! Can you imagine what would happen if all of the students at Geneseo voted for their preferred candidate in this year’s election? When you are spending the majority of your bachelor’s degree here, don’t you deserve a say in how the community’s resources are used? Imagine what could happen in Geneseo if your voices were heard.
The election is on Tuesday, March 14. In case you didn’t know, that is over break. But, good news—there is still time to register to vote in Geneseo, grab an absentee ballot and vote. You can register to vote and get an absentee ballot on the Geneseo website. All of the forms that you should need are there, in English and in Spanish.
I know that even after making it this far in the article, many of you still probably don’t care. Valid. Some of you are graduating shortly and won’t even be here to live out the effects of your vote; some of you are super busy and don’t want to take the time to fill out the forms and actually research the candidates and make an informed decision. However, if you are even remotely interested, you should vote, despite all the reasons you can come up with to not vote. Your opinion matters, and the ripple effects of your choices matter. So, get out there and vote!