Election Turnout About Half of Last Year’s

Click for the full-sized chart.

Observe my pretty chart.  In three of the four campus groupings, voter turnout is down by half this year. You can tell at a glance by comparing the bottom-row percentages, but I’ll crunch the straight-up number of students calculation for you as well: it’s down 47% in Boca, 46% in Broward, and 54% in Treasure Coast.

Jupiter alone maintained a similar level of voter turnout, going down only 7%. And in terms of  eligible voters, you can see from the chart they actually had a greater percentage of enrolled students voting this time around. Guess those kids over in the Honors College are more politically engaged than the rest of us.

The facts are clear, but I’m not qualified to infer the probable causes. Math major I’m not — failed Precalc as a freshman, actually. (But I got an A in it that summer.)

However, one possible factor is the registrar’s office screw-up. Even if that hadn’t happened, though, the original election flyers and what Boca House Representative Boris Bastidas called “almost non-existent advertising” might have disenfranchised some eligible voters.