He waited until everyone else had left the classroom. "Where do you vote?" he asked me. I looked up at my student, a young African American man, and said, "It depends where you live." "Oh," he said. I suggested he could find out if he called City Hall, or he could look online.
I checked to see if the computer in the classroom was hooked up to the Internet, and when I saw that it was I told him I'd try to get to the Massachusetts Secretary of State's webpage which allows voters to type in their address and find out where their voting place is.
Surprisingly, it was not as easy to find the page as I thought it would be.
I think given that it is less than one week before the election, the state should put up a link to the "Where do I vote" page right on the first screen on the Mass.gov website. I couldn't even get to the page by typing in the search box: "Where do I vote."
Eventually we found the page and he was able to type in his address and out popped the name and address of the voting place, along with information about which door to go in.
I asked him if he knew where that place was and he said he did. So he was all set.
I'm not sure what this little anecdote tells you, but clearly this young man who I'm sure was not old enough to vote the last time around cares enough about voting in this election that he made an extra effort to find out what he needed to know.
I think it shows that perhaps one reason why the turnout among younger voters tends to be low is that they lack basic information about the voting process, the mechanics of voting. I think it also may indicate that there are going to be a lot of new voters this time around, and that people who might normally pass these things by are actually going to go out of their way to participate.
It is going to be an interesting election.