If it isn’t bad enough that today’s college goers get irate if they have to trek a whole mile to a polling place, a recent focus group discovered why they won’t vote using absentee ballots:
They don’t know where to get stamps.
WTOP reports the Fairfax County (Virginia) Office of Public Affairs found out this summer that the United States Post Office “seems to be a foreign concept” to college students.
The office’s Lisa Connors said students will go through the whole process of obtaining and filling out an absentee ballot, but then are flummoxed at what to do with it.
“That seems to be like a hump that they can’t get across,” she said.
The focus group included college interns from across numerous county departments.
“They all agreed that they knew lots of people who did not send in their ballots because it was too much of a hassle or they didn’t know where to get a stamp,” Connors said.
“Across the board, they were all nodding and had a very spirited conversation about ‘Oh yeah, I know so many people who didn’t send theirs in because they didn’t have a stamp.’
To take on the apparent challenge, the county hopes many students will vote in-person absentee while visiting home during fall breaks. In-person absentee voting begins Friday.
“We’re really working on information to get the college students to be able to actually vote where they’re registered and vote absentee because it’s very confusing and it has a lot of pieces that can sort of go wrong in the middle of it,” said Kate Hanley, Fairfax County Electoral Board secretary.
Of course, “snail mail” eventually will be delegated to the dustbin of history … but come on!
MORE: Students miffed that nearest polling place is … one mile away
MORE: University of Indiana county rejects satellite voting
IMAGE: Giulio Fornasar/Shutterstock.com
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