Your vote matters!

Jake Duggan

He/Him

Content Manager

11/3/22

Voting can be a challenging topic to discuss, especially nowadays.  Discussions around voting often involve strong opinions and emotions, and can easily devolve into unproductive arguments.  These opinions and emotions can often cause people to avoid talking about voting or avoid voting altogether.  But now, more than ever, voting is incredibly important.  Though this is only a midterm election – meaning we are not electing a new president – your vote can make a huge impact on your life and the lives of your peers.  

Murphy Boccher is a campus organizer with the New Hampshire Democratic Party.  You may have seen them outside of the library, the HUB, or the dining hall recently.  Boccher’s job is to encourage students to get out and vote, provide information about how to register, and raise awareness about the importance of voting.  I asked Boccher why it is important for Plymouth State Students to vote in this election.  They said it is incredibly important for Plymouth Students to vote in this election because “Plymouth students are, they are students at a public university. So public education is actually on the ballot this year, specifically, one person running for office on the Republican side, he wants to diminish public education completely. He wants to get rid of all that and a bunch of other public programming. So that’s very important.”  We all benefit from public programs, especially from public education.  Public education is on the line in this election, and your vote can be the deciding factor!

Boccher also highlighted another issue that is on the ballot this year, they said “We’ve seen Roe v. Wade has fallen.  We have people running on the Republican side who want to make sure abortion is not available at all in this state.”  Your vote in this election will affect not only how much you pay to go to school and the types of public education offered in New Hampshire, but your vote will also impact women’s ability to receive reproductive care in New Hampshire.  These are two issues that will either affect you directly or affect your peers!  

Will Winters is the New Hampshire State Director of NextGenAmerica, the nation’s largest youth voter organization.  Their mission is to “empower young voters to engage in the political process and ensure our government is responsive to the largest and most diverse generation in American history.”  Like Boccher, Winters stresses the importance of voting in this election.  He states “Our generation is facing unprecedented challenges from attacks on access to abortion, to crippling student loan debt, and the rising threat of the climate crisis. Our elected leaders will only listen to us if we are making our voices heard at the ballot box. If we want anything to improve in New Hampshire or our country we all have to vote and make it clear that we need change.”

As a student at Plymouth State, you can register and vote in Plymouth, regardless of where you live.  Even if your residency is in another state, or if you are registered to vote in another state, you can still register here in Plymouth!  To register to vote here, all you need to do is take your Government Issued ID and your Plymouth State ID to the town hall, ask to speak with the town clerk and let them know you want to register to vote here.  Or, if you do not have time to get to town hall, you can bring your two IDs with you to Plymouth Elementary School next Tuesday and register right before you cast your ballot.

Polls open next Tuesday, November 7th, at 8 am at Plymouth Elementary School.  Polls will stay open until 7 pm.  NextGenAmerica, along with the University, will be providing shuttle services for Plymouth State Students to get to the polls.  The shuttle will leave from the Memorial Union Building and will run from 7 am-7 pm.  Regardless of who you vote for, getting out and casting a ballot is incredibly important.  Local elections like these are often decided by just a few hundred votes.  If every student at Plymouth State votes next Tuesday, those votes could be the deciding factor for the entire election!  Recent polling has indicated that this election is incredibly close, and it could come down to just a few hundred, or a few dozen votes.  

For more information on voting in New Hampshire, please visit www.voteinnh.org.  There, you will find information on registering, where to vote, and how to get involved.  

For information on who is running, and to learn more about each candidate’s platform, you can go to https://ballotpedia.org/New_Hampshire_Sample_Ballot.