In the recent election more Illinois citizens showed up to the polls than any other time since the 1970s, according to Illinois State Board of Elections spokesman Jim Tenuto, whose research showed that Illinois had more than 7.9 million active registered voters as of Oct. 24. Illinois also experienced record numbers of early voters. The Chicago Board of Election Commissioners spokesman Jim Allen said, “We’ve never seen early voting 40 days before the election. In 2008, we started 22 days before and in 2002, we started 15 days before.” This large turnout is believed to be the result of a very important federal election, but the senatorial race and more local representative elections have also brought out a lot of voters.
Macoupin county clerk Pete Duncan registers students to vote
On Friday, Oct. 28, students of Blackburn College gathered in the Demuzio Campus Center (DCC) to register to vote if they hadn’t already, or cast their ballot early. Macoupin county clerk Pete Duncan was in DCC to help students vote from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. “Right now we are very focused on elections, this election especially has been crazy for us,” said Duncan. This was the first time Duncan and his team of election judges had traveled to a school to register students. “It was pretty successful,” said Duncan. “Back in the primary was the first election where we had what is called ‘grace period registration’ on election day. This made it so people could come up to the courthouse, register to vote and vote the same day. A lot of Blackburn students who wanted to vote (primarily for Senator Sanders) came to the courthouse to do this grace period registration. We thought why not cut to the chase and come directly out to the college and let them do it ahead of time.”
Duncan believes this election’s increase in voters was largely due to young people becoming more politically active. “For anyone younger, voting is definitely important because we are the ones who these decisions are going to affect the most and the longest. Unfortunately usually we are the ones who participate the least; but hopefully that is changing for the better.” This seems to be quite the opposite for Blackburn students who were eager to cast their ballot. Junior science education major Johnathon Shaw said, “I voted because that’s the only way for democracy to work, you have to.” While junior environmental studies major Bonny Eyer said, “If we don’t vote now we won’t be able to change anything later.” Even professors appreciated the opportunity to vote early. History professor Gary Long said, “If we don’t use it we lose it. So we have to vote!”