After a failed birth induction, 17 hours in labor, and an emergency c-section, senior Sabrina Sherman still filled out her ballot in her Ann Arbor hospital bed on Election Day, 2022.
“A friend of mine came up to visit me in the hospital and I just asked her to drive my ballot down to Hillsdale and put it in ballot box for me,” Sherman said.
Sherman said her insistence on voting, even while recovering from a complicated birth, stemmed from her opposition to Proposal 3, which codified abortion rights in the Michigan constitution last year.
“It was super important to me that I voted against Proposal 3 in Michigan,” Sherman said. “I got as many people registered to vote here that I could and did a lot of door knocking at 8.5 months pregnant walking all around this town.”
As voting among college students nationwide rises with each election, Hillsdale students are keeping pace.
While Hillsdale students are twice as likely to vote as other young people, they mirror college students in voter turnout, according to a Collegian survey.
“One reason that people might vote is because they enjoy participating,” said Gary Wolfram, chair of the economics and business department,. “The second reason they might vote is that they feel it’s their duty to vote, and they would feel bad if they didn’t vote.”
Nationwide, 66%t of eligible college students voted in 2022. Michigan’s 37% turnout rate was among the 18-29 year olds in the highest in the nation in 2020, according to the Michigan Department of State.
According to a survey conducted by the Collegian in October, 81% of Hillsdale students voted if they were eligible in 2020. Only 12% of students over 18 were not registered to vote.
The survey, which received 120 responses, asked students if they were registered to vote and if they had voted in past elections.
“Probably why we have a higher rate is that people who attend Hillsdale College have come from schools and parents that would instill in them this sense of a duty to participate in your government,” Wolfram said. “And one way to participate is to actually vote.”
Senior Emily Jones said her parents instilled that sense of duty in her. Her father voted Republican and her mother often voted third party.
“They would mostly disagree on politics,” Jones said.
Still, Jones said voting day impacted the whole family.
“After they voted, they would have their stickers that say, ‘I voted,’” Jones said. “They would give one to my brother and I and we would each get to wear the sticker for the rest of the day.”
She said she registered to vote to mark her 18th birthday.
“I was so excited when I turned 18 to vote,” Jones said. “I said, ‘I’m gonna go register right now,’ because that was the year they changed the law so that you can’t buy cigarettes at 18 anymore. So there was nothing that I could do other than register to vote and then gamble.”
Senior politics major Jonathan Abrantes said he thinks many politics students have become cynical about voting.
“It’s hard to see the effectiveness of it within this current system,” Abrantes said. “Whether it’s fraud, manipulation — does my vote actually do anything? It is very cynical, but I see myself putting that vote in and whether my candidate is elected or not, nothing will actually change within the current system.”
Assistant Professor of Politics Daniel O’Toole said he sympathizes with those who think the political process is broken, but he still votes.
“I don’t think that voting will help much,” O’Toole said. “But I don’t sympathize with people who are apolitical, who don’t really think that the regime affects their lives or their families. One should be looking for ways to slow the regime down.”
