You want to know why student turnout was low? Because County Clerk Mark Shelden did everything in his power to keep it low. Early voting took place in an ambiguous location that most freshmen would not be able to find. In addition, on Election Day, if a precinct did not have a dorm located within it, the polling place was in a horrible location for students who lived in apartments. The Rehabilitation Center on Oak Street did not have parking, and Skelton Place is an adult subsidized housing complex in an area unknown to most students.
Most students did not know where their polling places were because Shelden failed to provide a map on his website of not only campus precincts but for every precinct in the county.
Thankfully, The Daily Illini constructed a map from the information given on the County Clerk’s website. However, the map did contain a few errors.
Many more students were turned away because they were told they had to have two forms of identification or that their driver’s license was not valid because it had their at home address. Mark Shelden did not let students know that their I-card was an acceptable form of identification.
If it wasn’t for the Illini Dems, students would still be looking for their polling places or asking questions about registering on campus.
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Mark Shelden has an obligation to voters to make voting processes easy and as accessible as possible. Mark Shelden seems to have forgotten that most students on this campus are over the age of 18, making them voters.
So it begs the question: Does Mark Shelden not trust students to vote, or does he just not like how we vote?
Lauren Eiten,
junior in LAS
