UVA Nonvoting

    Each year UVA Student Counsel has elections and each year they send repeated emails to UVA inboxes practically pleading for students to vote for representatives and referendums. Yet, each year resulting voter turnout is rather low. Even in March of 2022, when students voted to reform the honor sanction, a seemingly substantial issue, voter turnout was only 23.75% of the student body. This clearly came at no surprise to those who make the elections rules as only 10% of students were required to vote (with 60% of the 10% approving) for the referendum to pass. To give context, the US, which has been falling behind other democracies in voter turnout, has consistently reached the mid-fifties percent in the past three presidential elections. 

    

    Why do so few UVA students vote then? At its core, Johnson's argument on nonvoting presents a fairly concise flow--nonvoting increases as time value increases and as probability of a vote mattering decreases. First, let's deal with the latter assertion on the probability of a vote mattering. If we compare UVA elections to US elections, we see the probability of a vote mattering is actually greater due to the simple fact that UVA's student body is much smaller than the US voting population. Yet, UVA voter participation is drastically below that of the US. So, if we follow Johnson's logic, the issue must occur with the the first assertion--time value. What I'm assuming here is that this is rather relative. Your time value is compared to the significance of voting ( does the outcome actually effect the you?). In this light, I presume that UVA students have high time values, not in real terms more than the average US citizen, but in relative terms as student council representative and referendum elections effect so little of student life the benefit of voting is insignificant. Even with the honor sanction reform, very few students find themselves in the position where they would benefit from reform, so for most it is a logical solution, following Johnson's thinking, to either remain rationally ignorant or spend time elsewhere via a nonvoting activity. The reality is, a students time value does not have to be that great for it to be comparatively greater than the time spent voting for Student Council and about 76% of students thought this in March of 2022.