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By Todd Hardy and D. Shayne Christie
Arizona Daily Wildcat
November 6, 1996
Despite last-ditch efforts to register voters and increase awareness on campus, many students were apathetic toward yesterday's elections."The only thing people really care about is the presidential election, and that was decided two weeks ago," said Andrew Klein, mathematics senior.
"I don't think it's a surprise - based on the pre-election statistics, Clinton was obviously going to win," said Bridget Booth, pre nursing junior.
Berry Melfy, director of the Arizona Students' Association for the University of Arizona, said campus-wide efforts had registered about 4,000 student voters in the past two months. Overall, Melfy said ASA helped to increase the number of student voters in Pima County.
"I am really excited that Pima County had such a high voter turnout," Melfy said. As of 5 p.m. yesterday, Pima County had reported a 65 percent voter turnout.
In addition to voter registration efforts, ASA sponsored Debate Watch and Election Connection '96 to help students become familiar with all of the candidates on the state and national levels.
Melfy said Election Connection, which brought local candidates for state and federal legislatures onto the UA campus, was an effective way to increase student familiarity with local politics.
"I think that seeing the local candidates on campus made the whole election process more realistic for a lot of students," Melfy said.
Bennie Spencer, a member of the Associated Students Freshman Council, said Election Connection helped him decide which candidates to vote for on the local level.
Though there was a high voter turnout locally, many students chose not to vote, feeling their participation would not affect the outcome.
Stephen Wolf, theatre arts sophomore, said he would have voted if he thought Dole had a chance.
Other students said they did not vote because their polling site was hard to get to or because they just did not care.
Melfy said ASA offices had over 500 calls yesterday from students who didn't know where to vote.
Kara Laycock, a biochemistry freshman, and Emily Silver, media arts sophomore, both attended an election reception sponsored by Pi Sigma Alpha political science honorary last night, however neither voted.Because her voting district is far from campus, Laycock said, "I didn't get to vote this year."
Silver, a Californian, neglected to vote because she did not want to go through the process of absentee voting.
Julie Dosselman, musical theatre freshman, said she did not vote because she did not think the elections would have any effect on her life.
"I'm just going to keep on living, and I don't care. It hasn't affected me yet," Dosselman said.
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