Tuesday’s preliminary elections for the Boston City Council attracted a paltry 49 voters as of mid-afternoon at Myles Standish Hall, the polling center for most Boston University students. While the number is higher than at the last preliminary elections four years ago, 49 is not much of an improvement considering that tens of thousands of qualified voters at Boston University missed the opportunity to propel change in their city. Because only 128,000 out of 270,000 registered voters showed up this year in all of Boston’s polling districts, the BU community could have had a strong influence on the election’s results.
As much as students wish to criticize their city’s governance, they missed an opportunity to pave the way to change by failing to vote. City Council elections should not be considered unimportant and a waste of time, because decisions made by councilors affect more of residents’ everyday lives than national or even state elections. Parking rules, laws requiring clubs to close their doors at 2 a.m., keg registry rules and countless other regulations are all controlled by City Hall. To think preliminary elections are not worth the effort to walk to Myles and vote is like saying students are indifferent to these regulations, and students who decide not to vote should not have reason to complain.
The BU community will have a second opportunity to vote during the mayoral and final City Council elections on Nov. 8, when the incumbent Mayor Tom Menino and Councilor-At-Large Maura Hennigan end their race for the city’s highest office. Even students who do not plan to stay in Boston after graduating should have an obligation to future generations of students to pave the way to change.
This year’s candidates included several young, new challengers, some of whom presented appealing agendas to students, but few BU students showed their support.
The ease at which the Boston Election Commission organized voting procedure – providing Spanish translators and multilingual instructions on voting cards, and requiring only a mild form of identification such as a bank statement – should not have led to a low turnout.
The Election Commission also has a responsibility to encourage voter turnout, as probably several residents were not well aware the election was taking place. Moreover, the city requires residents to register weeks before the elections, unlike other major cities in the United States, where voters are not required to register in advance.
The Election Commission should consider removing advance registration requirements, and encourage citizens to vote in time for the mayoral elections, and students who care about the city in which they live should prove it by voting.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
