Countless resources have been devoted into making it more convenient for people to vote. High technology companies such as Google has contributed their shares. However, contrary to the good intention, Google online voter registration may end up decreasing the turnout.
This new approach by Google is designed primarily to attract the young voters. And the somewhat unpopular reaction it received among students is not at all surprising to me. Google tries to get more young people to vote through sending negligible registration email invitations, asking for your private cell-phone numbers and then sending nagging text massages if you don’t follow through the instructions and register. So you see why this is not a popular approach.
Although the voting process has been made much easier over the years, the voting turnout continues to drop. Maybe we have grown more mathematically sophisticated to realize that despite of what politicians say, our votes don’t count after all. Or, in this particular case, college students as a special group have a more particular feature—social pressure plays a much more significant role.
Are college students politically apathetic? Of course not. Politics is still a popular topic on the dinner table; Do we not care about our own country’s future? Of course we do. But to be honest, we care more about how we look among our peers. Maybe it is like what we discussed in class: people vote in order to be seen. What matters is not the action of casting the vote online, but rather, the ability to say that I went to the poll and casted my ballot.
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