Students prepare for Election Day

Many VCU students are going against the national trend of declining voter turnout by saying they do plan to vote tomorrow.

Students say they want to sway the Senate seat either toward incumbent Republican Sen. George Allen or challenging Democrat Jim Webb. A major draw to the polls seems to be the proposed marriage amendment.

“I am mainly voting because of the marriage amendment,” said Jeff Castle, a junior music major. He said he will vote against the amendment.

“I do not think it is right to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman because it is more a consecration of love,” Castle said. “You cannot tell someone that they do not love somebody else.”

As for the other two ballot questions, sophomore interior design major Zachary Becker said he had trouble understanding them after reading his absentee ballot.

“It is hard to read them,” Becker said. “The way they write is not the layman’s language at all. It is lawyer speak.”

Whether or not they can understand all of the ballot questions, however, many students said they will still cast their votes tomorrow.

For those not registered to vote in Richmond, many feel the election is important enough to warrant an absentee ballot or even a trip home.

“It is important. It is a very close election,” said junior history major Jesse Johnson, who plans to drive to his home district in Northern Virginia to vote.

Other students are uninterested in voting.

Freshman biology major Princewill Unigwe said he plans tomorrow to go to class, work and an eye appointment at the hospital. The election has not made it anywhere in his itinerary, he said.

“I do not want to,” said Unigwe about voting. “I have never thought about it. I will probably care sometime, maybe when I am 25, 30.”

Some students have thought about voting and still decided against it.

“It is hard enough to keep up with deadlines for classes, let alone politicians,” said senior English major Callie Furlong, who has not registered to vote.

“I work about thirty hours a week, I am taking five classes, and I have chronic fatigue syndrome and a puppy, so I’ve kind of got my plate full,” Furlong explained.

Furlong said she may have registered if she cared, but she has become politically jaded since the 2004 presidential election.

“I was 18, idealistic and excited about the election,” Furlong said. “I really thought voter apathy was the problem, not the government, and that I could make a difference, and all I had to do was vote.

“Then it turns out that yet again some kind of sketchy sort of counting tactics made Bush win,” she said.

“There is nothing that I can do as a 20-year-old college student to counter that with a check mark,” Furlong said, adding that all she can do is complain.

Furlong said the media coverage of the current Senate race has substantiated her feelings.

“I have just been seeing the commercials and glad I am not part of the voting,” she said. “It is just like playground games. I just do not have time for it.”