 "Photo: Jeff Carpenter/Cardinal Points")
First-year Student Association Sen. Andrew Desmarais is taking an early initiative in the preparation for the November elections by trying to raise student awareness about the location of voting polls.
Desmarais, who is a senior at Plattsburgh State, is baffled by the current voting poll set up in the City of Plattsburgh.
Desmarais’ biggest issue is that only one of the voting polls is convenient to college campus students.
The one convenient poll, he said, is located at the PSUC Fieldhouse.
The college is split into three different voting precincts, which Desmarias said is “unacceptable.”
He said the college is divided with students voting in different wards depending on what dorm they live in. His problem is that not all students are allowed to vote at the Fieldhouse.
The campus is divided where students living in deFredenburgh, Hood, Moffitt or Wilson vote at Pine Harbor on New Hampshire Road, while those living in Mason, Harrington, Kent, Macdonough or Macomb vote in the OLVA School, located on South Catherine Street.
Only students who live in Whiteface, Adirondack and Banks halls are allowed to vote at the Fieldhouse, the closest and only location on campus.
“It just seems like you would not cut the college up into three slices if it wasn’t done for a reason,” Desmarais said.
He said he believes the two other voting polls assigned for students are too difficult to get to. This has ultimately led him to think the city doesn’t want the students to be part of these elections.
“It is designed to make them not vote,” he said.
Along with Desmarais, the Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence Becky Kasper has also voiced her concerns with the polling arrangement.
Kasper explained how discouraging the other venues to vote are for the students who are not assigned to the Fieldhouse.
“The problem is not a lot of students have transportation, so it just makes it more complex for students who try to vote,” Kasper said.
At the last November election, Kasper even arranged for students to get transportation to and from voting stations with the help of other faculty members, which emphasizes the difficult situation students are placed in when they want to vote.
Although the election is nearly nine months away, Desmarais has already thought of some ideas to jump over the voting poll hurdle.
“I am looking into bills or resolutions that the SA could support in order to get closer polling places,” Desmarais said.
So far, faculty support toward this problem has not been as favorable as he would like and Desmarais said the chance of voting locations changing is slim.
He has suggested the college could use the parking shuttle to take students to the various polling places and not just to the Fieldhouse.
Desmarais said he believes as a senator it is his obligation to make sure PSUC students have the same chance to vote as anyone else.
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