Jenna Shaefer is a registered independent voter in South Carolina. Her home state had an open primary on Feb. 29, which means that voters didn’t have to be registered with a specific party to vote in that party’s primary.
But even still, the 18-year-old environmental engineering freshman didn’t vote.
“I feel like it’s just a hassle,” she said.
Shaefer said she didn’t know how to get an absentee ballot from her state. She said there aren’t enough resources to help out-of-state students vote, but she also doesn’t actively look for information on it.
The Florida Democratic primary is on today, and Democratic voters will get to choose among Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard as the party’s presidential nominee. But young voters have consistently low turnout rates. On Super Tuesday, where 14 states voted, the youth turnout from state-to-state ranged between 6 and 19 percent.
At UF, voters registered in Alachua County and living on campus could vote early at the Reitz Union. After turning in their ballot, voters can even choose to receive an “I voted” sticker with an alligator on it.
Shaefer said that even if she were to register to vote in Florida to make voting easier, she wouldn’t register with a party in order to vote in the closed primary, despite feeling that she leans more toward Democratic ideas.
“I really don’t like the party system,” she said. “It’s ridiculous that we even have parties in the first place.”
She said she doesn’t think primaries are entirely important, but she does plan on voting in the November presidential election.
Shaefer said she doesn’t feel a connection to any of the candidates, and the two-party system turns her off from voting in any primaries.
“I feel like it’s more like a boycott kind of thing for me,” she said. “But I also feel like it’s not very effective if I (boycott) anyway.”
Daniel Gallup, a 19-year-old UF political science freshman, disagrees.
“It is important that you have your voice heard in the primary because that will be the candidate who’s going to go up against Donald Trump,” he said.
He had been a longtime supporter of Buttigieg because he thought he was decent and genuine, and would bring the best vision and progress to America. He was disappointed when he ended his campaign, but the disappointment in seeing his preferred candidate withdraw from the race wasn’t enough to stop him from voting in the primary, because at the end of the day, he said, he values the Democratic Party over an individual candidate. He plans to vote for Joe Biden instead because he thinks Biden and Buttigieg have similar values and that Biden will bring about meaningful change to the country.
“If you make the decision to not vote, and I do have a couple of friends who just don’t feel the motivation, I think it’s more important that you vote in November,” Gallup said.
Contact Kaelyn Cassidy at kcassidy@alligator.org. Follow her on Twitter @kaelyn_cassidy.
A woman votes in the presidential primary election at the the Summit View Church of the Nazarene Tuesday, March 10, 2020, in Kansas City, Mo. The polling place served two precincts as voters who were scheduled to vote at a nearby senior living facility were directed to vote at the church after the facility backed out due to coronavirus concerns. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)
