Editor’s Corner: Efforts to spike student vote

Elections are vital to our society, our country and our schools, and in the most recent national election, young adult voters were on the rise and made up 19 % of the total electorate, according to The Huffington Post’s “Youth Vote 2012 Turnout.” Yet, when it comes to elections at Rider, it seems like fewer students are excited to vote for the Student Government Associations (SGA) Executive Board.
This year at Rider, in an effort to obtain more student votes for the elections, an online voting option was created for added convenience. On April 8, the cyber-ballots were opened for students to cast their votes, which preceded the standard voting day that was held in the Student Recreation Center (SRC).
This new option of voting should have made students feel more inclined to vote since they wouldn’t even have to leave their room. Yet, a big flaw in this plan actually deterred more students from trying the new voting system.
Out of the whole campus, roughly more than 500 students voted in total this year, according to current SGA president Lorelei Colbert. About half of those votes were cast online.
In order to log in online to vote, you needed to go to your campus mailbox to pick up your username and password. As lazy college students who didn’t want to trek to the SRC in the past to vote, getting up to check their mailbox seemed just as annoying, and therefore resulted in fewer voters. Instead, passwords and usernames should have been emailed to each student or the voting should have been done through a Rider-based site where students can use their normal username and password information.
Though the online voting system had good intentions and was a step in the right direction to get more voters, it should have been planned out more to ensure its help during elections.
-Kristy Grinere
Opinion editor