As the Midterm Elections approach, student groups have been encouraging students to vote on Tuesday, November 6 (Photo Gabi Eglinton/The Gettysburgian)
By Lizzie Hobbs, Staff Writer
With midterm elections approaching quickly, students and organizations on Gettysburg’s campus are all getting ready. After weeks of working to get students registered to vote in Pennsylvania and spreading awareness about absentee voting in students’ respective states, many Gettysburg students are preparing to cast their votes on November 6, if they haven’t already.
Student political organizations, like Gettysburg College Democrats and the Gettysburg College branch of Democracy Matters, are hosting events which coincide with the timeline of the election.
Democracy Matters, a nonpartisan, nationwide organization, puts its focus on educating the public on the importance of the democratic involvement of young citizens, who traditionally have incredibly low turnout rates at the polls.
As a nonpartisan organization, they will be hosting a campus-wide political debate on November 1, featuring representatives from a variety of partisan and cause-focused political organizations.
Hannah Labovitz, ‘21, co-President of Democracy Matters, answered the question of “Why should young people vote?” simply and immediately: “We’re the ones who are living with the legislations that are going to be made, so we should be the ones out there choosing it. Obviously more people in general should vote so their voices are heard because that’s the whole point of democracy.”
Unsurprisingly, after their efforts in registering Gettysburg College students to vote in Pennsylvania, the vast majority of Democracy Matters members plan on voting in Gettysburg on Election Day.
Gettysburg College Democrats, one of many distinctly partisan organizations on campus, has also been incredibly active in the efforts to register students to vote, and members have often been seen carrying stacks of voter registration forms with them over the course of the past few months.
They will be hosting an event called “Our Voices, Our Future” the night before the election, inviting students to speak on progressive values, social justice, and the importance of the midterm election. This event will be co-sponsored by a number of groups on campus, including the Black Student Union, Peace and Justice Studies, GECO, Students Against Sexual Assault, among others.
Gettysburg College students have not been quiet about their intentions to vote in the upcoming elections, with many turning to social media over the past few months, encouraging their peers to participate as well. Students have been commonly sighted walking through the College Union Building with their newly retrieved absentee ballots over the past few weeks.
For those residents of the college who are registered to vote in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania Voter Services has designated CUB 126 as their polling place. The polls will open at 7:00 a.m. and close at 8:00 p.m.
