Students go to vote

By Ellen Liu     11/4/10 7:00pm

Rice students, faculty and alumni headed to the polls on Nov. 2 to cast their ballots for the midterm election. Between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., 400 people went to the Miner Lounge in the Rice Memorial Center and voted for national, state and county officials.Election Judge Cindy Dinh helped plan and oversee the entire process and said she was extremely pleased with Tuesday's turnout. Dinh, a McMurtry College senior, said that, according to a previous election judge, only about 100 students had come to the polls a few years ago. Dinh said any eligible voter who uses his residential college address can vote on campus, but usually not many people participate during midterm elections.

"Since Rice makes up nearly all of Precinct 361, we have a very distinct voting block from the precinct next to us," Dinh said. "It really sends a strong message when students come out to vote in large numbers because it shows what candidates and issues students align with here."

Dinh said she worked with the Office of Public Affairs, Rice Vote Coalition and the Student Association to institute new get-out-the-vote activities like a voters' registration drive, opinion-editorials in the Thresher and Rice Standard and a competition in which the residential college with the most votes cast won a $250 study break.

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To help people learn more about the candidates, Houston's League of Women Voters published a Voter's Guide that was distributed throughout campus. This pamphlet included candidate responses to several questions depending on the position they were running for and general information about voting.

McMurtry senior Kathleen Li said this year's governor's race was very important to her. She said she had not been very politically active until she heard about the social sciences curriculum change Texas' Board of Education passed recently. According to Li, this change included removing Thomas Jefferson from required course material and downplaying Japanese internment camps and the McCarthy scare.

"I'm passionate about [public education] because I came from a public school," Li said. "The curriculum change made me very upset, and I wanted to see what we could do about it."

Li said she wanted to find some way to change the leadership of the board and found out that education was one of White's main priorities. She said she cast a straight Democratic ballot, with a few changes.

Regarding overall voter attitudes at Rice, Li said a spectrum of attitudes existed.

"Some students are really active," she said, "But there are always going to be people who don't really care and some who don't vote on principle, which I think is silly."

Martel College sophomore Maggie Sulc said she remembered learning in government class about how not enough people vote and consequently wanted to exercise her public responsibility, though she said she didn't have time to inform herself about all of the candidates.

"I only made votes I was informed about." Sulc said. "I didn't have time to go over the entire voter's guide. It's not possible to be both a fully informed voter and a student."

Sulc said it was important to know candidates' stances on personally important issues before voting.

"Simply voting along party lines doesn't really help anything," Sulc said. "It just moves people out and rocks the system."

Duncan College sophomore Drew Moore was one of the students who participated on election day.

"My uncle is running for judge," Moore said. "Of course I wanted to support him."

According to Moore, the governor's race between incumbent Republican Rick Perry and Democratic challenger Bill White was the only other important election for him. He said he thought the candidate blurbs for the other positions in the Voter's Guide were not particularly helpful.

"I didn't feel like I really understood their positions, so I only voted for people I knew about," said Moore.

Duncan freshman Matthew Lopez said that he had not been keeping up with the candidates and issues because of a busy schedule, so he decided not to register this year because he was not well-informed.

"It's cool to be able to say, 'Oh, I voted,' but I also think that [your vote] should mean something," Lopez said.

Perry was ultimately reelected governor of Texas, with the percentage of votes received by Perry and White at 55 percent and 42 percent, respectively. In addition, 23 Republicans and nine Democrats won Texas 32 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives. As a member of Voting District 7, voters at Rice chose between Republican incumbent John Culberson, Libertarian challenger Bob Townsend and write-in Lissa Squiers. Culberson won with 81.9 percent of the vote.

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