Who doesn't want convenience?
We carry around phones that put practically the knowledge of mankind at everyone's fingertips, so much so educators are convincing themselves that knowledge isn't nearly as important as a learned ability to think. Why should kids know who the presidents were, what states they came from and when they served? It's all on Wikipedia, right?
What’s the point?
A University of Arkansas student government proposal for a vote center on campus should be pursued only if students cover the costs and the addition doesn’t reduce voter convenience elsewhere.
We're ordering soups, salads, sandwiches, coffee and pizza and paying for them with our phones. Don't have time to shop? One particular retailer Arkansans are familiar with allows customers to shop online, then pull up in a store parking lot so an employee can load the trunk, letting customers bypass the need to even step inside the store.
College students want convenience as much as anyone else. If there's a Starbucks a mile from campus, why shouldn't there be one on campus, too, so those caffeine cravings can be immediately fed? Forget those old-timey days of walking down the hall to take a shower. Yuck! Put one close enough where the student can roll out of bed to a hot shower just a few feet away. No furry slippers needed.
So it makes perfect sense that students and others at the University of Arkansas might want the Washington County Election Commission to install an early voting center on campus. The Associated Student Government along with some faculty and staff are pushing the issue for the November general election, but 2016 isn't the first time opening a polling place on campus was a hot topic.
It's different these days, though. Washington County has adopted the "voting center" concept made possible by electronic poll books. Because those poll books are continuously and immediately updated from a centralized voting database, poll workers can know whether a resident has already voted elsewhere. That permits voters to cast ballots at any vote center, the one most convenient to their daily routine. It's quite a change from the old days of early voting only at the county courthouse and voting only at an assigned precinct on Election Day.
When we're talking convenience, voters -- the ones on campus and the ones in Washington County who rarely, if ever, set foot on campus -- have it pretty easy nowadays already. First, early voting lasts a week for many elections and two entire weeks for the general election. If someone says they don't have time to vote, they're just wrong.
And in past recent elections, getting to a vote center has also been incredibly easy, with one in Prairie Grove, two in Springdale and three in Fayetteville. To the west, one has traditionally been at the Donald W. Reynolds Boys and Girls Club, about 3.5 miles from Old Main on campus. To the east, the vote center at the Washington County Courthouse is one mile from campus. That's just a little more than 2,000 steps for you Fitbit aficionados, about as many steps it takes to get from the campus' Maple Hill residence halls to Bud Walton Arena for a basketball game. Surely casting a ballot, participating in our republic's political process, is as important to the people on campus as the "Fastest 40 Minutes in Basketball."
But we get it. Students, faculty and staff long for convenience. Why walk, bike or drive a mile if you can walk a quarter-mile, right?
"More than anything, we are excited about engaging young people in voting," said Conner Flocks, student government president, at a recent Election Commission meeting.
We get what he's saying and appreciate the sentiment behind it. Young people should be engaged in our elections. Kudos to Flocks for his involvement and advocacy. Everyone older than 18 should be voting, for that matter. Yet we're skeptical an on-campus voting center will produce a crush of new voting. There's little doubt people on campus would use it, but most are probably already casting ballots at those other convenient locations.
Here's a key point those on campus should keep in mind: There's no excuse for not voting even if there's not a vote center on campus. If that has been a barrier to anyone's participation in the past, to borrow a phrase from the great political philosopher Sarah Silverman, "you're being ridiculous."
But back to the request from the students, who have offered to pay the approximately $8,000 in costs for the vote center and additionally the costs of about a dozen parking spaces for poll workers, because they apparently know failure to make poll worker parking on the UA campus easy would be a deal killer.
The Election Commission will decide at an Aug. 19 meeting whether to provide the on-campus option. Here's our advice: If the student government and/or university want to cover all the additional costs and if the commission can provide the vote center without cutting back on the existing vote centers around Washington County, then why not?
The commission has a duty to the voters of Washington County, all of whom have fairly convenient access to existing vote centers. Nobody with much common sense would drive onto campus solely to vote, so it's important that the existing vote centers and the convenience they represent to all voters should be maintained.
Otherwise, if the UA student government has the money to spend for the added convenience, why not? It wouldn't be the first time money was spent on the UA campus for something wanted more than needed.
Commentary on 07/29/2016