A Bill for Students
My opinion on supporting first-time student voters at Citrus.
One of the things to look forward to turning 18 is gaining the right to vote. This year California Midterm Elections took place on Nov. 8, 2022, which was not far away from the beginning of the fall semester at Citrus. As high school graduates ranging from 17-18 years old entered Citrus, they got emails prompting them to register to vote.
The Midterm Elections happen every two years and are focused on the House of Representatives and the Senate. While this is a national election and voters may vote for their own representatives, they also vote in their local and state elections. These local elections are for their governor, mayors, judges, local officials, propositions, and more on their local level. Although the Midterm Elections may not be as big as a Presidential Election, they still call for voters and for them to vote for their local officials. People then need to cast their vote.
At Citrus College, students receive emails about registering to vote from the Student Affairs department. I, like many other Citrus students, are incoming freshmen. Receiving these emails was surprising, and I was happy that my community college encouraged me and other incoming students to vote in this election. The constant emails also made me ask, “Why do they keep sending emails like this to us?” So, I went to Rosario Garcia, the director of Student Life at Citrus and asked her about the constant emails.
During my conversation with Rosario, she talked about how important she thinks these emails are and how students should vote. She also introduced me to California’s Assembly Bill 963. Assembly Bill 963 establishes California Community Colleges, University of California, and the California State Universities to introduce the “Student Civic and Voter Empowerment Program.” The bill requires all of these institutions to distribute information on voting and election-related dates in campus-wide emails to students, posting this information on social media for students to view and designate one person per campus as the Civic and Voter Coordinator holding these responsibilities and developing a “Civic and Voter Empowerment Action Plan” on their campus. Here at Citrus, Rosario Garcia is the Civic and Voter coordinator in charge of sending out all of these emails to students. Rosario and I talked about Assembly Bill 963 and how important it is to all California Community Colleges but also what steps Citrus takes to promote students to vote.Citrus is required to host three events every election year, one held on national voter registration day, workshops about voter information, and a constitution activity. All of these events are meant to help students understand their rights and how to practice their voting rights. Rosario mentions how she believes these events are so important here on campus because of how confusing these elections can get by media influence. Citrus tries to help students understand how to vote and guide them to make their own decisions.
Rosario also shared why she thinks students are encouraged to vote and why they should participate in elections. “It’s important because it affects you whether or not you think it’s not going to affect you. Of course, it does, everything affects you, whoever is selected for any position in government, it’s somehow going to affect you.” The way that she mentions how everything affects our community. This is something that Citrus tries to get students to understand. By promoting how elections work and how to vote the goal is to get students to cast their vote. This bill promoting voting within all California Community Colleges, University of California, and the California State Universities should increase the amount of young voters here in California.
This is not the situation everywhere. According to FiveThirtyEight, a new survey with Ipsos states: “More than 8,000 Americans, people between 18 and 34 are less likely to have faith in our political system. But when we asked why they hadn’t voted in the past, we found that younger people weren’t more likely than older people to say they didn’t vote because they think the system is too broken to be fixed by voting, or because all the candidates are the same, or because they don’t believe in voting.”This was seen throughout the 2020 election. Overall, it seems like younger voters still believe that their vote doesn’t count. This is where lots of them fall through because they believe that their vote will go to waste and will not pay off the way they expect in their community.
This generation is coming to vote and make a change for their communities.
Personally I believe that it is important to vote. As a young voter I try to become involved and fully understand how whatever is on the ballot may affect me and my community. Some things that affect the way I vote are my family life and the media. In a way, all the things on the ballot place a big part into our everyday lives. For example, both of my parents are educators; therefore, they always suggest that I vote in a way that may help funding of public schools so students may increase access. Although I understand this is not the situation for everybody, as a young voter it is easy to be influenced by family life. This is one reason I feel it is important to educate young voters on what is on the ballot and to help them properly dissect how things may affect us.
Another thing that is easy to persuade voters is the media. Social media is only progressing to be a bigger thing every day with new advancements. At first it felt as if the media was only commercials, billboards or listening to commercials over the radio. All of these advertisements are biased on whether or not you should vote on these things on the ballot. While viewing these advertisements you can notice how all are biased and not actually telling you what you are voting for. This is being seen on social media more and more. For young voters on social media, it can be very dangerous to find election information due to most of the information being heavily biased. Luckily, social media sites like Facebook and Instagram have now implemented fact checking so now they can reduce the amount of false information being spread on their sites. However, these things can still be confusing and confuse new voters.
I decided to ask other students here to see if they had the same perspective that I did. Jacob Torres, a first-year nursing major at Citrus explained why he thought it was important to participate in the Midterm election. “I am voting in this election to experience what it’s like to be a first time voter. I truly care about my future, and I feel that taking part in this election is important for young adults overall and many of us should participate. When I think about voting in this election now, I think about the outcome of my future in the upcoming years.” Jacob is one of many teens that participated in this last election and understood why it is important to vote. He understood how his choices on the ballot may affect him in the future.
Jacob and I also spoke about Assembly Bill 963 and how it impacts students here at Citrus. He was familiar with the bill at first but I began to explain how the bill requires Citrus to send out these voter resources to students. Although Jacob had shared with me already that he was already registered to vote, I asked him if he would use these resources that Assembly Bill 963 pushes out. He said that he would and that it was very important that these resources may be shared to students. “Honestly, it’s definitely good to keep pushing voter registration on everyone. Because during the fact that we really want as many people to vote as possible, because it is these people who are going to shape the future of the country, and our states, our counties everywhere that we are, want to make sure that people have their voice heard”
In conclusion, the way that more Gen Zers are coming of age to vote, technology continues to progress and it could easily get confusing for any first time voter. This generation is coming to vote and make a change for their communities. The process may seem intimidating but implementing Assembly Bill 963 in colleges may help young voters and assist them in this process.
