By Leslie Moonshine
AADC’s voter registration volunteers were on the Sierra College campus for California’s Primary Election Day, Tuesday, March 5. We had a short survey on whether students had already voted or were planning to vote. We were also interested in whether they voted by mail, by drop box, or in person.
Our primary purpose for the day was to remind the students that ballots were due by 8PM! We loved that we were able to direct students to the new on campus Voting Center to either drop off their ballots or to vote in person. Signage for the new Voting Center was sorely inadequate (and we’ve since relayed our concern about this lack), so many students were unaware of this new, convenient option. We lost count, but we think we were able to direct at least ten students to turn in their ballots on campus who otherwise might have been unable to get their ballot in. So, we’ll call that a successful day on campus!
On Tuesday during the second week of March, Robert Sherriff and Noelle Filice-Smith conducted a survey regarding which candidate was most trusted by students with respect to these economic measures: Job Gains, Unemployment, and Disposable Personal Income after Inflation. Biden won as the most trusted candidate! Students were then provided with graphical information from the Washington Post showing Biden’s superior performance to Trump on these measures. This helped reinforce one of our goals: helping students understand the need for reliable and factual information to support the claims made by candidates.
The Wednesday team focused on elements of Biden’s newest budget proposal. We highlighted 7 aspects: Taxing the Wealthy, Border Security, Immigration Caseload, Reducing Childhood Poverty, Lowering Healthcare Costs, Clean Energy Jobs & Infrastructure, and Bolstering the IRS. We then asked students to identify their top three priorities. The results were quite surprising! Students were most concerned about lowering the cost of healthcare (47 votes), even though our information on this budget item centered on Medicare’s ability to negotiate costs of prescription drugs. We found out that students are all for taxing the wealthy (44 votes), but that they failed to see the benefits of increasing the IRS budget (7 votes). A final surprise was the lack of support for investing in clean energy, which finished in fourth place (24 votes), surpassed by students’ concern for reducing childhood poverty (30 votes). And contrary to the latest news we hear blaring from the GOP corner, concerns about border security finished last (18 votes).
Sierra College was on spring break for the third week in March, the 18th through the 22nd. We will return to campus on our normal schedule, Tuesday and Wednesday, March 26 & 27.