Student Opinion – Being educated to vote is easy

Once again, election season is here, and it brings with it the usual host of cliches and traditions. Among these common tropes, one of the most often used is the excuse of the average citizen that is not going to vote because they don’t feel “educated” enough about the election or the candidates. This is, without a doubt, one of the worst excuses there is for not voting. 

When I say that being uneducated is not an excuse for not voting, I am not encouraging uneducated individuals to go vote. That happens enough already, and we need less of it, not more. 

What I am saying is that people need to stop complaining about not being educated on the current issues and actually educate themselves on them. This excuse often comes up the most during periods when voter registration is happening. Voter registration usually begins months before an election and has a cutoff a few weeks before the election, giving people plenty of time to research candidates and issues. 

We live in a time where we have access to endless amounts of information at our fingertips through the internet and our smartphones. We can find anything we want to find, including information on candidates in elections from the federal level all the way to the city council. We cannot make up a good enough excuse for not being informed about what is going on when we can find out anything we want in a matter of seconds.

For an example, I did an experiment. In the 2nd Congressional District of Utah, there are four candidates running, including incumbent Republican Chris Stewart and Democrat challenger Nicholas Mitchell. I knew nothing about this race or anything going on in Utah prior to my Googling “Utah congressional races.”

I timed myself while doing this, and it took me 45.6 seconds to find this information. It’s just as easy to learn what the candidates are running on; the information is out there.

There is absolutely no excuse whatsoever for not being “educated” enough to go and vote. We can find out who is running in the area in less than a minute using a quick Google search. If most of us were honest, including me, the only reason we don’t feel “educated” enough to vote in a political race is because we are too lazy to do any research. 

I have been guilty of this myself. In 2021, during the Virginia governor’s race, I walked into the ballot box knowing I was going to vote for Glenn Youngkin for governor, Winsome Sears for lieutenant governor and Jason Miyares for attorney general. I very quickly discovered these were not the only races happening and ended up leaving the booth having marked a few random names I didn’t know and writing in Dr. Doug Damon from the LU Shepherd office in the race for treasurer in which there was only one candidate. This was obviously irresponsible, and I do not advocate anyone doing what I did, although I do love Damon and believe he would be a wonderful treasurer. 

Stop saying you are not going to vote because you don’t feel educated enough about what is going on. Every second you waste complaining about your own ignorance is a second you could be using to do quick research about who is running in your area. Stop being lazy and educate yourself, both for your sake and the sake of your community. 

Hughes is an opinion writer for the Liberty Champion