Student Discontent with the U.S. Political System

With our choices for president looking awfully familiar, we wanted to ask students if they’re as disgruntled with voting as everybody else seems to be.

By Joshua Kloss

Haven’t we been here before?

Four years ago we were faced with the exact same two candidates who are now on the ballot for 2024. Time is a funny thing; it feels like we’re right back to where we started. Biden versus Trump. Again.

Except a lot has happened since 2020, and voters seem to be paying attention to different key issues when deciding who to vote for. Specifically, one such trend emerging from states like Minnesota and Michigan is the rush to vote ‘uncommitted,’ in the primaries, reflecting voters’ upset with Biden’s failure to call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. According to polling results from the Associated Press, Joe Biden received 70.7% of the votes in Minnesota’s presidential primary election on March 5. The runner-up was ‘uncommitted,’ which yielded 18.9% ---almost 19%--- of the votes. This means that about one in five Minnesota Democrat voters opted for ‘uncommitted.’ National Public Radio notes that that’s a higher percentage of votes then Michigan saw in their primary, where ‘uncommitted,’ got 13% of the votes. The (almost) 19% uncommitted vote was also considered a win for the grassroots group Uncommitted Minnesota, who said that their goal was 5,000 uncommitted votes.

Is Biden listening? Maybe. Though calling for a ceasefire, Biden is quite late to the game, failing to call for any sort of ceasefire only until earlier this month. Meanwhile, other countries have been pushing for one. Furthermore, in a recent Instagram post, Biden shared his ongoing support for the state of Israel, and affirmed their right to go after Hamas. Nonetheless, his swift choice to adopt a ceasefire resolution seems to reflect a bit of worry on his campaign team’s part, perhaps due to the recent trend to vote uncommitted. Kamala Harris, on the other hand, called for only a temporary ceasefire, conveniently letting the issue span out election season. Further discontent with Biden’s politics can be seen in his going against the policies he initially ran on in 2020, among such being his anti-immigration sentiments such as expanding the border wall, or the innumerable oil drilling projects signed under his presidency so far.

Now I know nobody asked the features editor, but I’m a bit disgruntled at where we ended up as a country, in light of the next election that looms just around the corner. And it’s a sneaking suspicion of mine that other people might feel the same way. I can pull innumerable personal anecdotes from past conversations with friends, family, and maybe even enemies who shared sentiments along the lines of “I don’t like either candidate,” or, “I’m just not voting if we end up with those two again.” And it’s not like criticisms of the electoral college are new, either: it’s easy to recall just how upset people across the country were when Clinton lost to Trump in 2016 in terms of electoral votes, despite Clinton securing more of the popular vote then Trump did.

But enough of what I think or what I remember people having said to me in past conversations. I’m curious if this feeling, this general lack of trust for the U.S. political system, is indeed a shared sentiment among students here at the U; especially after many students just voted in the primaries. Did students opt to vote uncommitted, too? And, in light of being left with the same two candidates as we were in 2020, are students feeling as disgruntled as I am? After all, students have always been an instrumental force in sparking change in this country, examples of which I can point to anti-war protests across campuses in the 70s, and even now the remarkable liveliness of clubs like the SDS across the country. There’s a reason that police show up when protests are organized on-campus and other public sectors: they know the power of the people, and they're terrified of it. This is why so many efforts from the government —from conservatives and liberals alike— have focused on silencing people. At some point the government shifted from ‘representing all people,’ to blatantly ignoring them; and although it might seem like no one’s listening, we are. In the interest of representing people’s sentiments, The Wake polled students at the U on their opinions about the upcoming presidential elections.

Among those who filled out the survey, there was a fairly even split between those who voted and those who did not on March 5; around 51% of respondents said that they did vote, whereas about 48% said they did not. Of those who did vote, a little less than a third voted ‘uncommitted.’

A much less divided response pool came about when asked, “Did it surprise you at all that the candidates for the Republican and Democratic parties ended up being the same as they were in 2020?” Only two respondents indicated that they were surprised by the results, whereas the remaining 93% of respondents indicated no such surprise. Nearly 80% of poll participants also answered “Yes,” when asked if they felt “disgruntled at all with the U.S. political system.” But why is that?

When asked to elaborate, students shared a myriad of reasonings. One student noted that “we have rampant neoliberalism or facism to choose from.” Many students expressed sentiment that the electoral college and the ways in which elections are run do not serve the interests of the American people: many responses said that the electoral college is something that we as a country have “outgrown.” Other students expressed dire want for ranked choice voting, which would open up the presidency to third-party candidates. Perhaps most pertinent of the issues expressed in student responses is the concern that we don’t operate on direct democracy, given that the electoral college is more in control of presidential candidates than the popular vote, and that voters are so often forced to choose in a two-party system.

This, of course, raises bigger concerns about the efficacy of voting; if voters feel that their vote has no power, then participation in voting is sure to decline. And yet, half of the respondents who did vote —52.6% of voters that took the form— said that they felt good about themselves / accomplished after having voted on March 5. And, nearly two-thirds of total respondents said “Yes,” when asked if they feel that their personal vote has efficacy, or that their individual voice makes a difference in political outcomes.

Not underscoring the value of getting out to vote, it is interesting to consider why some students answered “No,” to the efficacy question. For some, voting only seems to make marginal statistical differences. Others indicate that they feel more empowered in their vote when participating in more local elections, rather than national ones.

One response that I personally want to highlight comes from somebody who claims to be a poll worker: “At polling places, we have access to see the percentage of people who are registered to vote compared to who actually showed up… Numerous times I have personally seen the difference between an initiative passing and not only by a handful of votes. It is important to voice your opinions in our elections, even if the system is flawed.”

Indeed, it is a flawed system. But neither are we here to underscore the importance of participating in it, either. Calling attention to that last part of the quote, consider the impact ‘uncommitted,’ votes had on Biden’s stance on a ceasefire. In that sense, voting can have an impact, you just need to get creative with it.

Maybe one day the whole system will collapse, or be dismantled. Or maybe we’ll be choosing between eighty-year-olds until the whole planet burns. Either way, the importance of making your voice heard still stands true. Maybe that isn’t by voting— maybe you make your voice heard in other ways, like rallying for causes you support or writing your legislators. Nonetheless, students are a powerful force to be reckoned with.

You, dear reader, are a force to be reckoned with; don’t you forget it. Your voice is only powerless should you forget its power. On that note, try and get to the polls in November, okay?

Sources, literature:

- https://apnews.com/projects/election-results-2024/minnesota/?r=25869

- https://www.npr.org/2024/03/06/1236396078/in-minnesota-uncommitted-got-19-of-the-democratic-presidential-primary-votes