Lessons learned from this election

Lessons learned from this election

To the editor:
Voting is one of the few things people of my generation can do to decide how the government is run. My first experience with voting was with the Presidential election two years ago. I attend the University of Maine, where many students are liberal and hold close to their values. Obama won the college generation by a landslide. With the use of social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter, it is easy to target my generation.

This year, each of the gubernatorial candidates had a Facebook page where people could become a “fan” of them and leave wall posts. On Election Day, Paul LePage led the race with 8,731 fans, followed by Eliot Cutler with 6,523 fans, and Libby Mitchell brought up the rear with 4,562 fans. I was discouraged by this because I have voted Democrat for the past three years I have been able to vote, so seeing my candidate in last place did not give me hope. Many of my fellow Democrats on campus voted Independent that day for Cutler, because he stood a better chance against LePage than Mitchell did. I too, should have made the decision to vote for Cutler.
When I found out that Paul LePage had won, later that night, I was disappointed. I am not sure if it was because I had gotten so hyped up about a woman running in the Maine gubernatorial election that could possibly be our next governor, or because Mainers across campus anyway, were also let down. Perhaps if more of the Democrats had made the decision to vote for Cutler, he would have won the gubernatorial race.
On Election Day, for a journalism class assignment, we went across campus and asked people varying questions about the election. I took it upon myself to see if students and faculty were actually voting. I spoke to close to 20 people and some of them didn’t even plan on voting that day.
It frustrates me that my generation has a narrow-minded view of the future. Many of my peers are Trust Fund Babies that will never know what it is like to pay back student loans, to get denied because of poor credit, or have to work more than one job to get by. We are too preoccupied focusing on ourselves that we cannot look at what is going to become our future.
There are, of course, some college-aged people that are immersed in the world around them and what is happening with the government. For those that do not vote though, the reason is weak. Many responses were that they just didn’t know enough about the candidates or even who the candidates were! It scares me that in 20 to 30 years these people are supposed to have the most influential voices in the country. How are we supposed to run a country where no one knows what is going on around them?
As far as the results from the election this year, we can only put our trust in the newly elected governor and hope he makes the right decisions for Maine. I would like this to be a lesson to my generation though. Follow the news, pay attention to what is going on in the world outside of Facebook, and vote. Voting is the most important thing a college student can do for the bettering of their government.