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Miami students decide to vote early, absentee

Weighing the costs of casting a ballot in Ohio

By Jack Evans, News Editor

As the national presidential campaigns crank up the pressure in their final push for voters on November 8th many Miami students have decided to get the stress of voting over with early.

Miami has 6,057 domestic, out-of-state students across its Oxford and regional campuses, according to 2015 Miami Institutional Research. While these students are eligible to register to vote in Ohio, many members of this significant chunk of voters elect to fill out absentee ballots that allow them to vote as a member of their home state.

Early voting ballots, which include absentee ballots, as well as in-person early votes, already number at 6,003,292, according to The United States Elections Project. Total early voting could make up 34 percent of the vote this election season, estimates Michael McDonald, the founder of The Elections Project and associate professor of political science at the University of Florida.

Despite the large number of absentee voters nationwide, sophomore Nick Froelich said there are compelling reasons to vote here in Oxford.

"Your vote counts more in Ohio," said Froehlich, an executive member of College Democrats with extensive voter registration experience. "No Republican has ever won the presidency without the state of Ohio and Democrats have only done it twice -- once with FDR's third term and a second time with JFK."

The relative deciding-power of Ohio voters is perhaps the strongest reason to vote in Ohio instead of absentee. An analysis by the website WalletHub gave the Ohio voter a vote power score of 141.06 -- fifth in the nation. This score was calculated through a combination of Fivethirtyeight's win probabilities, the number of electors for a given state and that state's population over 18.

The issue of voting convenience has would-be student voters split on absentee ballots. Some don't want to go through the process of re-registering to vote in a presidential election season that has frustrated them.

"I was discouraged because I didn't think it mattered who got elected, regardless of the outcome. I figured that I wouldn't go through the trouble of de-registering in New Jersey and registering in Ohio," said Lindsay Cerio, a sophomore. "It was [easy], even though I was pretty much undecided when I got the ballot. And then I had to make a quick decision and send it back in about a week."

Others, like Froehlich, find in-person voting to be the easier route.

"First off, it's so much easier to vote in person. You can just show up -- it takes about fifteen minutes. Usually, it's at Shriver Center or Hamilton schools, it's super easy," said Froehlich. "Or, if you register to vote here, you can early vote and go to the Butler County Board of Elections and just get the whole thing over with."

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When asked about his voter registration experience, Froehlich, who has registered hundreds of voters this election season, said some students just use the claim of absentee voting to avoid him.

"Well, everybody says that they're going to absentee vote, well at least everyone who decides not to register here," said Froehlich. "They say 'I'm going to send in a ballot by mail.' I'm not too sure that they'll actually do it because it is a longer process than voting in person. Many times, people just don't want to talk to me."

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