East Lansing officials are trying to get more students to the polls to vote for the 2016 election season.
In past off year elections, officials have struggled with low voter turnout. In the 2014 local election, 25 students of around 50,000 voted on campus. That’s less than 1 percent.
“Clearly the trend is students are less interested in local election. They’re a little bit more interested in off year or even year gubernatorial elections,” East Lansing City Clerk Marie Wicks said.
When asked, many students said they didn’t vote because they weren’t registered in the area. Others expressed that they simply weren’t paying local politics any attention.
Wicks said that the clerk’s office sees a lot higher voter turn out in the presidential years but the policies that directly effect students is what’s in the local candidates hands.