Your voting power is like a sledgehammer. It’s a powerful tool for building, demolishing and shaping things, like the government. But when thrown around carelessly and without a second thought, it can cause permanent damage. Elections are in November, so we’re giving you advance notice on how to conduct your own make-do investigations in lieu of the detailed research you should be doing on the candidates. We’re still a month out, so you have plenty of time. We urge you to take the five or 10 minutes you need to Google the candidate you’re going to vote for. Take a critical look at their policies. Don’t let your gut lead you astray. Even if you only cram in a few Google searches, always vote with your head. Think of it like you do when you rush to complete a last-minute assignment.
It might go something like this: You are assigned the task and procrastinate heavily. You find yourself up at 3 a.m. Monday morning chugging coffee, rigorously Googling before a 9 a.m. due date. You use Sparknotes, Chegg or your crutch of choice to get a basic sense of the assignment. With your back against the wall, you manage to eke it out on time. You get a B+. You feel a profound sense of pride and wipe the sweat from your brow. Repeat until graduation.
Can you take this same model and apply it to voting? Can you cast your ballot like you submit assignments at 11:58 p.m., seconds from failure? Yes. It’s not ideal, and you should be giving yourself more time to look at the issues, but it works. It can be done. As long as you show up to the polls with a few minutes worth of research, you can make a meaningful difference. Sites like Ballotpedia.org are the Sparknotes of voting. Use them. They can give you a decent picture of the candidates and their positions on issues like the environment or education funding. A quick look at the Ballotpedia page for either Andrew Gillum or Ron DeSantis, who are candidates in the 2018 Florida gubernatorial race, will give you their brief biography, their political history and a synopsis of their platforms. As long as you are literate and have a spare 10 minutes, you can be an informed voter.
The candidates are relying on you to not do your homework. In the last Student Government elections, we cannot know how many students voted with nothing but someone else’s recommendation to go off of. We also cannot know whether the elections would have turned out differently had students researched the parties and their platforms. But we do know that a lot of students simply picked the party they heard was best and bubbled straight down along party lines. The same goes for presidential elections. We have a bright orange president to show for it.
If all you have to base your choice on is a trustworthy friend’s recommendation, try this next time you need to drive: Get your best friend to sit in the passenger seat, blindfold yourself and ask them for directions.
It doesn’t seem like a good idea because it isn’t. You don’t need to be a Formula One driver to know that you can’t drive without seeing. You can’t pass without studying. You can’t vote without researching.
We’d like to remind you that you don’t need 20/20 vision. You don’t need to interview the candidates. You just need enough to get by, even if its rushed and done on a cracked iPhone in line at the polling place. The worst thing you can do is forfeit your right to vote because you don’t feel informed. The only thing worse than a wrong vote is not to vote at all.
