For many LSU students, next week’s election will be their first time voting for president of the United States.
But amid a closely polled and politically polarizing race, some of the university’s first-time voters are opting out altogether.
Sociology junior Meadow Walker was too young to vote in 2020. This year, she decided not to register at all.
Originally from dark-blue Illinois, now transplanted in deep-red Louisiana, Walker said she felt her vote didn’t matter. Neither state is a swing state, she reasoned, so what’s the point? Either way, her ballot would disappear as a drop in a sea of a single color.
Then there’s the Electoral College which, unlike the popular vote, actually decides who will become the country’s leader.
“We aren’t as much of a democracy as we claim to be,” Walker said.
Despite her home state’s color, Walker said she had looked favorably on former president and candidate Trump during his presidency. But since then, the indictments, his felonies and increasingly outlandish behavior had put her off the former president.
When Kamala Harris called Trump a fascist in a recent interview, Walker said the word drove home some of her feelings about the former president. At the same time, Walker said she didn’t know enough about Harris to support her at the polls.
Many LSU students lamented the election’s candidates.
This year would be business management freshman Vivian Giordano’s first time voting, but she said she missed the deadline to register. Even so, having to choose between Trump and Harris left a bad taste in her mouth.
“I don’t want to vote for either of those people,” she said. “I would rather vote when there’s a better election.”
Students who planned to support Harris phrased their decision in terms of the opposition.
“I can tell you who I’m not voting for,” said engineering freshman Cervantes Brown. “Trump.”
Psychology sophomore Adrien Lagard felt the same way. He didn’t much like Harris, but saw her as the lesser of two evils. Lagard said he’d watched videos of Trump rallies to decide for himself what he thought about the former president.
“He looked completely off the rails to me.”
Lagard took issue with Trump’s erratic behavior, browbeating and lies, he said.
“His whole thing is fear mongering, and he uses that fear to get people on his side.”
The sophomore said he wished there was another candidate, but voting third party was tantamount to throwing away his ballot.
“The number one thing I’m concerned about, I guess, is having a sane person as president,” Lagard said.
Harris still felt like a relatively unknown quantity to him, and Lagard said he didn’t particularly like her or her policies. But at the very least, she was not Trump, and that was enough.
Students who had voted or planned on voting for the former president backed him with an easy and stalwart confidence.
“Everyone has their opinion,” said electrical engineering freshman Jonathan Bickford. “I think he’s the better candidate.”
Bickford said he believed Trump’s presidency would be better for the economy, a sentiment echoed even by some Harris voters, like Lagard.
When pre-nursing freshman Olivia Carpenter voted early, she voted for Trump. Carpenter, who hails from New Orleans, said she was influenced by the belief that Trump’s presidency would be better for the economy. But more than that, Carpenter said her family played a strong influence.
“I’ve always been told to vote Republican,” she said. “I mean we live in Louisiana, you know?”
Business freshman Calsey Williams, also from New Orleans, had a similar experience. Williams said she’d planned on voting, but didn’t know how to register. But her grandmother, a lifelong Democrat, insisted Williams sign up.
“She basically told me it was really important, and that people died for that.”
Williams said she wasn’t a particularly political person and much of what she knew about the presidential race came from social media or from listening to her family.
At the same time, Williams said she voted for Harris because she cared strongly about women’s rights.
“She would be the first woman president, so I feel like that would be a special moment for us.”
Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 5 with polls opening at 6 a.m. and closing at 8 p.m.
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