Denied the Right to Vote

In September, my roommate and I registered to vote in the SGA voter drive. We were very excited for our first election this Tuesday and spent over five hours researching the candidates so we could make an informed decision. On the way in I told several candidates how excited I was to be voting for the first time. Unfortunately, we arrived at the polling office to find we were never registered at all. When I left Wayne Hall, Carolyn Comitta, now Council Member Comitta, asked how my first time voting went. I explained the situation and she was extremely disturbed and immediately began working to discover why my roommate and I were not registered. Clearly this was more than one missed registration. A member of Comitta’s campaign team went to SGA and discovered they “did not have time” to turn in the early September registrations before the October deadline. They turned the registrations in late, and since it was “only about thirty people” they did not feel the need to call and notify the students that they could not vote in this election. It may have been just thirty to SGA, but in an election where only three hundred and seventy four people voted, and the mayoral race was won by just one vote, those thirty would have made a difference. Also, it is estimated that through out all the organizations campus wide, over one hundred students’ registration materials were late. One hundred votes could have changed the outcome of almost every position up for election. Students have been silenced by organizations created to give us a voice.