Breaking down the trends

Running a student election at a university as big as ours is no small feat, and the University Board of Elections deserves a great deal of praise for a job (mostly) quite well done.
That said, this year’s encouraging voter turnout was solely a product of the honor referendum’s presence on the ballot. As Geoff Skelley points out, turnout trends over the past five or so years directly vary according to whether or not a controversial referendum is included in the election that year. The record for overall turnout still belongs to 2005 (with 40 percent), a year in which students were asked both to vote on an amendment changing the honor code and on an opinion poll querying if they were interested in honor finding alternatives to the single sanction. This year’s numbers compare quite favorably to non-referenda years, and similarly to years with referenda on the ballot.This isn’t to say we shouldn’t be encouraged by this year’s 38% turnout. Any such year of high student participation is cause for celebration. It just means we need to be realistic about the context of voting. Certain proposals will always garner more attention than others, and amendments that immediately impact student self-governance (like the honor code) are far more important to students than actually deciding which students get to fill the chairs of Student Council, the University Judiciary Committee, etc. Since amendments are very clear-cut in terms of their effects while candidates can only effect so much unilateral change without voter approval, this trend is both understandable and to some extent desirable. Ideally turnout would be near 100 percent for each election; this never happens even on a national level in the U.S., so we temper our expectations accordingly. All things considered, honor amendments are among the more important of electoral decisions students will have to make regarding self-governance during their time here.
Another trend that would be interesting to dissect is the turnout breakdown by year. First-years and second-years trumped the upperclassmen with 59% and 52% turnout, respectively. Third-years had 49% while fourth-years had 37%. The overall undergraduate rate was 49% and the overall graduate student rate was 16%. The undergraduate breakdown by year is curious yet predictable. Younger students are probably both more likely to have free time to vote and to see that these decisions will affect them the most (as they have the most time left at the University). Older students are probably more likely to be busier, to have become disenchanted with what they see as inaction on the part of student leaders, and to realize that electoral decisions will impact them for only a short time before they graduate. Master’s and doctoral students appear to just feel far more apathetic to student self-governance than undergrads. Again, this is fairly predictable, although even more effort to drive up the graduate school turnout rate would be a great thing. In short, we should all take pride in the fact that, by and large, student self-governance is prioritized by enough people to have meaningful elections. This is nothing to take for granted. We just also must understand the nature of any student election and search for ways of improvement that account for these inherent limitations.

False positives

Save for the numerous fliers littered around Grounds and the colorful invasion of our sidewalks, student election week was no different than any other at the University for the average student. According to the University Board of Elections, overall voter turnout this year was 38%, the second-highest rate since the recordkeeping began in 2004. This may be an encouraging sign for those who champion student self-governance and civic involvement at the University, but unfortunately for them, honor is another highly esteemed tradition at Virginia’s flagship university; this year’s spike in voter turnout was due to a controversial honor referendum instead of an increased enthusiasm for student government.
If the voter turnout data were placed on a graph, this year’s value would be considered an outlier. The highest rate was in 2004, when the UBE began tracking voting behavior. Turnout dropped all the way to 22% last year, only to increase more than 50% this year. A boost of that magnitude can only be attributed to a major influence on a student’s desire to vote. Obviously, voting has been encouraged, but no major campaigns were implemented within the last year with the goal of improving voter turnout. In fact, the only significant difference that I know of between this year and last was the touchy honor proposal to eliminate the single sanction. Since such a large percentage of students (70%) voted against this referendum, it is possible that many students decided to vote this year with the sole intention of knocking down the new honor proposal. Some point to the improvement among first-years, but this jump in turnout is not unique to our University’s youngest members. UBE statistics show that the turnout rates among first-, second-, and third-year students were all within ten percent of each other. The number of fourth-years that vote will always be lower since very few of their classmates are on the ballot. Those about to graduate are probably more concerned with finding a job than who the next Student Council representative from their college will be.
However, the traditionally low turnout rate is not a reflection of student self-governance at the University. Student leadership councils are important, and all efforts should be made to encourage people to get involved with these organizations, even if that involvement is something as little as volunteering to campaign. But the hundreds of other student organizations at the school, many of which support themselves financially, are the purest form of self-governance. The campaign volunteers in November are the ones that are truly civically involved. The volunteers who bother students all day for the sake of charity are the real public servants. Students at the University can contribute to self-governance with much more than just a vote.

Giving credit where it's due

While this year’s voter turnout was higher than in past years, the credit for this should go to the candidates and those supporting and opposing the referenda, instead of any special status organization. The countless man-hours spent chalking and talking, plus the dollars expended for fliers, advertisements, and other paraphernalia likely had much more of an effect than anything Student Council, the University Judiciary Committee, or the Honor Committee did this year. And while it almost goes without saying, it is worth adding the University Board of Elections to the group of organization that did little to nothing to raise turnout this year.
How, then, were students motivated to vote? The most likely explanation for voter turnout is a combination of identification with and excitement for a candidate or referendum. Looking at the turnout statistics by school, it is clear that the schools which field the most candidates in the election have the highest voter turnout. This is also an obvious explanation for why the fourth-year voting rate is always lower than that of other years. With no, or very few, fourth-year candidates on the ballot, graduating students likely know fewer candidates than those students in other classes. This theory of identification and social connection driving voter turnout breaks down when we see that first-year students vote at a higher percentage than second-year students, even though the second-year class likely contains more candidates than the first-year class.
There is a secondary theory, though, that can add to this understanding and redeem the model. As students get more excited about a candidate or referendum, they are more likely to vote. Since first-year students are highly concentrated on Grounds and therefore exposed to many more campaign messages, it makes sense that they would vote more. This goes practically without saying, but it is an important point that is frequently overlooked. A student is more likely to vote if he sees a flier for a candidate which mentions some issue he cares about. Reading an ad in The Cavalier Daily which mentions some positive or negative effect of a proposed referendum serves the same function, exciting students to vote either for or against that measure. Unfortunately, the same groups (the Cavalier Daily Opinion page included) which criticize students for failing to vote also ridicule candidates and groups which “annoy” students with their campaigning. We too often forget that chalking, handbills, and fliers are merely media used to energize supporters and apathetic students, thereby increasing voter turnout, which we all recognize as a noble goal.
If we want to see a continuation of the turnout increase, we should take two lessons from these theories, as rudimentary as they may seem. First, more candidates should be encouraged to run, for every position, from every school and year. Second, students should be encouraged and lauded for campaigning. Being asked to fulfill your civic duty should not be seen as a distraction, but instead as a reminder of the blessings of our system of democratic self-governance.

Topic of the Week: Voter turnout in spring elections

Alisa Abbott announces the results of the honor single sanction reform amendment. Photo by Julia Slater.
Today, the University Board of Elections released the results of last week's University-wide elections. Voter turnout was the highest in four years, with a turnout for the College of 48% and a total voter turnout (excluding the School of Continuing and Professional Studies) of 38%. Compared to last year's dismal turnout of 22%, this would seem to herald a renewal of student self-governance.
Yet there was a contentious referendum on the ballot this year: the single sanction reform amendment. Of the nearly 8,000 students that voted, 70% of those students said "no" to that particular referendum. Only 2% of voters did not cast a vote on the single sanction reform amendment. Maybe the only reason voter turnout was so high was this one referendum. What does that say about the state of student self-governance at the Univeristy? Do we show up for the important stuff, or is student self-governance taken seriously all the time? Certainly there have been efforts to improve voter turnout after the poor showing last year. First-year student turnout was 59%, up from 41% last year. Fourth-year student turnout was only 37%, much lower than the other three classes. Maybe incoming students are more engaged in student self-governance than past students have been.
So the question is: Is increased voter turnout due to the controversial referendum or are students taking more ownership of the system of student-self governrnace at the University?