To the Editor:
Daniel Linsalata rails at the Young Democrats in his confused critique of Get Out The Vote efforts here at Dartmouth ("Student Voting At Dartmouth," The Dartmouth, November 9). The main thrust of his argument is that the students the Young Dems turned out were uneducated voters, a claim he substantiates by pointing out that while the incumbent Sen. Judd Gregg carried most of the state, he lost handily here in Hanover. Had the students been educated, Linsalata holds, they would have known about the vast amounts of pork-barrel money Gregg feeds the College, and thus would have voted for him. The problems I have with this are numerous.
First, just because students are in the dark about local campaigns does not mean they are uneducated; it is a safe bet that most students turned out to vote for the president, not any senators. Linsalata claimed that to protect against this he voted in his home state; I see no grounds for lambasting students who felt that, because they did not live in a swing state, they ought to vote in New Hampshire instead.
Second, Linsalata does not even entertain the notion of a protest vote. As the Republican message has slid further down the slope of intolerance, I have heard many, even longtime Republicans, voice a complaint with the party in general. The best way to make such a vote heard is a straight party ticket vote.
Third, Linsalata also fails to recognize that many uneducated voters get to the polls on their own. Come Election Day, the job of educating voters is over. Getting out the message and getting out the vote are two separate aspects of a campaign. On top of that, to suggest that a Get Out The Vote effort might want to scale back its efforts because they are afraid the students might be uneducated is unnecessarily moralizing and paternalistic. What goes on inside a voting booth is the business of the voter only. Further, if anyone is responsible for Dartmouth students' ignorance on Gregg's positions, it is Gregg, who made no effort to win the Dartmouth vote.
Last, Linsalata tacitly approves of pork-barrel politics, which is fine, but then takes his argument to the next level with the assumption that all students share his moral bankruptcy. The fact is that many Americans do not approve of pork, even when they are the main beneficiaries. This is especially true in a time of runaway debts, a falling dollar and rising interest rates.
While I agree with the general idea that voters ought to be educated, I do not find lashing out at the Young Democrats or the college voters as at all instructive in this matter. Instead, perhaps Linsalata might try his hand at distributing fliers and talking to undecideds in the next election.
