Readers may have noticed that I did not review the October 2nd Common Council meeting. I’ll offer remarks, instead, on a single topic from that meeting.
Perhaps I should not be surprised that one council member, ill-disposed to student housing, is ill-disposed to a voting station on campus, too.
I am sure that citizen-students on campus, over the age of eighteen, are entitled to vote as a matter of state and federal law. I believe that the city should — as a presumption — make it convenient for them to vote. They have that right apart what anyone in Whitewater thinks of them, of their youth, or politics. These are settled matters of federal and state law; no one in Whitewater — no matter how self-important — should inhibit that right. It says much about the arrogance of a few that they feel no shame in posing every objection to voting on campus. Dislike of the campus, and its students, is a trait that many of the town faction share.
Students on campus should be able to vote smoothly and reliably, and a campus-based polling station will make that happen.
Most of these students will vote their conscience for conservatives, or liberals, and not libertarians. I wish there were more libertarian candidates, and that more voters would support those candidates. No matter; I do not fear the contrary preferences of others. Even if I were so weak that I did fear those choices, I hope that I would not be so wrong that I would try to limit the exercise of choice itself.
It’s sad, laughable, and infuriating to watch someone on council grope for ways to object to voting on campus. It’s an exercise in selfish preferences. Let’s consider one misplaced objection: the complaint that if hundreds of students could go across town for “Make a Difference Day,” then they could go to the Old Armory to vote. These two acts are not the same; they are wholly different.
When citizen-students go to the lakefront to work on projects, they confer a benefit on us; when we deny them a polling station on campus, we inhibit the exercise of a right of theirs. They are not obligated to go downtown to help the community, and we should be grateful to them that they do.
We are, by contrast, obligated to them, and all other citizens, to assure effective voting access. When the town faction says that they love Whitewater, they mean that they love it so much their way that they would debase the democratic nature of the community so that they could possess this town forever. They’re no more citizens than any others, no matter how much they want to flatter themselves with the false notion that they know more, count more, and are worthier.
Would someone remind them that they cannot simultaneously argue that students should not register and vote on campus, and contend that when students register and vote at the Old Armory, they make voting inconvenient for non-students. Pick one.
By the way, if you and your stodgy friends walk away from voting when you see too many students at the Old Armory registering to vote, then you’re more tired, and more dissipated, than I suspected. You should find their presence energizing; that you find it discouraging speaks poorly of you.