Lindsey Wright, a freshman government and politics and environmental science double major, outside Stamp Student Union’s Atrium after casting her ballot on Election Day, 2014.
A total of 817 students cast their vote in Stamp Student Union yesterday, the largest student voter turnout this university has seen for a midterm election in at least 12 years.
The turnout surpassed the 656 student votes counted at Stamp for the 2010 election, as well as the 680 student votes for the 2006 election. Of this year’s voters, 437 were registered Democrats, 141 were registered Republican and 239 were registered other or unaffiliated.
“I’m proud of students for coming out and voting, I’m really proud of the work of the SGA and TerpsVote Coalition, and Luke Pinton for heading up TerpsVote,” Student Government Association President Patrick Ronk said. “To see that enough students cared about the election to make sure they came out to have their voices heard is incredible.”
A chief justice working for the precinct said no notable problems arose during the day, and the number of student voters — especially those voting provisionally — was much higher than expected.
“About half of our total voters voted provisionally, and that’s mainly because a lot of students who could not get home to vote, they came here because they didn’t have time to get home, or didn’t have time to get an absentee ballot,” the chief justice said. “But the day went exceedingly well, we had a good turnout.”
Students who came out to vote for the election, such as senior government and politics and history major Emily Richardson, said they believe voting is not only a civic duty, but an integral part of ensuring the voices of students are heard on a larger platform.
“If I don’t vote, then I’m not taking advantage of a major avenue that’s been given to me,” Richardson said. “We have a massive body of political participants here, and we should definitely have our voices heard as the younger members of the political body.”
Rye McKenzie, a sophomore economics major, said he came out to vote simply because he could.
“Not everybody gets to vote,” McKenzie said. “I think as a country, we’re lucky that we get to vote, so I do.”
The considerable student turnout is likely due in part to pre-election efforts of the TerpsVote Coalition, which is comprised of the SGA, MaryPIRG, the College Democrats, College Republicans and HeadCount — a nonpartisan, national voter registration group. According to an SGA news release, the group successfully registered 1,271 students from September to mid-October, mainly through tabling efforts at locations around the campus such as in the dining halls, McKeldin Library and Stamp.
That total hovered close to the 1,400 paper registrations for the 2012 presidential election, which MaryPIRG member and junior environmental science and policy major Grace Davis said is a good sign.
“I think [registration turnout] was honestly good, because it is a midterm election, and it doesn’t have much press, and it’s not as popular as presidential elections,” Davis said. “The fact that we got pretty close to the amount of registrations for the presidential election is great.”
Luke Pinton, SGA’s director of governmental affairs, said he is pleased with the effort TerpsVote made this semester, but he noted the number would have likely been higher if this university’s online voter registration system was still running. The SGA expected 2,000 registered voters before the online system was cut, Ronk said.
“Because of the data breach last year, where the social security information was taken, because of that, they can’t have [the online voter registration site] up, because it’s a security threat,” Pinton said. “It serves as a large detriment, especially because everyone’s so media and online oriented.”
