Low Voter Turnout at S.U.'s Bird Library

November 3, 2009

Voter turnout was low the first four-and-half hours of Election Day at Bird Library on the Syracuse University campus and election inspectors expected it to stay that way. Election inspectors (pictured right) said the big reason is that it's not a presidential election year and most college students don't care about local elections.

“Students worked for years to get the vote and now they’re not interested,” Norm Keim said. Keim has been an election inspector for 25 years. He is a former film professor at Syracuse University.

Keim said candidates wouldn’t want college students to vote in local elections anyway. Most of them aren’t locals and they have minimal knowledge or even awareness of local politics.

S.U. senior Audra Coulombe said she voted in the 2008 Presidential Election by absentee ballot. Coulombe can’t vote today because she’s registered at home in Southbury, Conn.

“I don’t give time to elections if I don’t have enough knowledge on them to make an educated decision,” Coulombe said.

Only 18 people voted from 6 a.m. when the polls opened until 9:30. Another hour brought just a single additional voter. Election inspector Susan Greenman said "a couple" were SU students. And while Onondaga County has spent millions on new optical scanners, all 19 voters opted for the old-fashioned lever machines.

Although Greenman optimistically referred to the polling place as “busy,” the corner of the library where the two voting machines were set up was deserted except for the four election inspectors as the morning wore on.