Panelists for RSU’s ‘Your Vote Matters’ discussion included Rogers County Election Board Secretary Julie Dermody (from left), distinguished professor Dr. Carolyn Taylor, and Jake Brillhart, RSU accessibility and disability resources and student programming assessment coordinator.
Barely a month before the November midterm elections, Rogers State University hosted a discussion about the importance of voting, where to find candidate information and how to research state questions.
Held Wednesday, Oct. 5, in RSU’s Stratton Taylor Library, “Your Vote Matters” featured a panel that included Dr. Carolyn Taylor, distinguished professor; Jake Brillhart, accessibility and disability resources and student programming assessment coordinator; and Julie Dermody, Rogers County Election Board secretary. Each panelist brought their unique expertise to the discourse on the importance of voting at all levels.
First to speak was Taylor, who addressed the importance of midterm voting.
“In my opinion, the midterms are just as important as the presidential election – there are many reasons why,” Taylor began. “This midterm election will be the first (election) after the reapportionment and redistricting of all the states, so that sets a pattern for the next 10 years – who wins these seats in a month. That’s very important because that can determine control of state legislatures, governorships, all those kinds of things.
“Oklahoma has a problem in terms of voter turnout in general, but especially in midterm elections. In fact, in the last midterm election (in 2018), Oklahoma was 40th in terms of voter turnout in the midterms – only 10 states were worse than us – and in the 2020 presidential election, according to the Tulsa World, Oklahoma was 50th in voter turnout,” she said. “So, we’re not seeing a lot of turnout in this state in midterms or in the general election.”
Dr. Taylor speculated that one of the reasons for the low voter turnout was “low competition,” in that candidates for many seats oftentimes fail to draw opponents, not helped by Oklahoma being one of six states to offer straight party voting.
“Straight party voting is kind of the lazy way to vote – just mark Democrat or Republican, without doing any research or even knowing much about the candidates,” she said. “Another problem is that there are fewer what we call swing states or competitive states than ever before. Most professionals say there are about 34 House seats – out of 435 – that are truly toss-ups. All the others are probably already decided, maybe because of gerrymandering, maybe because so many of the seats are very safe. We’re not going to have very competitive races, at least at the Congressional level or our U.S. Senate seats, in Oklahoma.
“Nationally, it’s an important race, because it’s going to decide the control of the House and the Senate,” she continued. “The House is very closely divided. If the Republicans just gain four or five seats, which is highly likely, they’ll become the majority party. The Senate, as you know, is 50/50, with Kamala Harris breaking a tie, so a swing of one or two seats either way will give the Republicans the majority, so there’s a lot on the line in these midterm elections.”
With only two exceptions since World War II, 1998 under President Bill Clinton and in 2002, under President George W. Bush, the party in power has traditionally lost seats during the midterm elections, Taylor said.
“Midterms are important – we have to do better in Oklahoma,” she said. “We have to get candidates to run, get voters out to vote and make our elections something that everybody believes is important, because they are.”
Adding to the lowered voter turnout in recent years, according to Brillhart, has been a systemic decline in public trust.
“We’ve seen this (decline in trust) across the board in many institutions,” Brillhart said. “We’ve seen that in federal agencies – the federal government, along with state and local governments as well. We see that in schools, the same goes for places of worship. Quite frankly, if you’re any kind of organized public civic group, public trust in that kind of traditional institution has declined. I think there’s a larger problem of people not having the same civic spirit that they used to – I’m talking about star-spangled patriotism, but the sense of people in a community feeling that even if they don’t agree with the prevailing party or administration, that they can still believe in the values of an organization, that it’s here for everyone, regardless of their race, ethnicity, creed, heritage, etc. – that it’s really our government for us.
“But more contemporarily, when we look at the discourse among particularly young voters, a number of things stand out,” he continued. “There’s a greater disillusionment in young people about ‘What is this system and what is it doing for me?’, and I don’t think all of that is unwarranted. I think this generation was dealt kind of a rocky hand. They grew up in the wake of 9/11, not knowing what it was, they grew up in the wake of the financial crisis. Many of them are disillusioned with the world in the best way possible. They’re skeptical, they’re critical, they’re asking ‘What are the assumptions our systems are built on and what are they doing to center democracy?’”
Dermody reminded her fellow panelists and the audience that, although America has a democratic means of voting, the country is a republic.
“It’s a common mistake for people to use the word ‘democracy’ in the wrong way, because we live in a republic, and we need to make sure when we’re talking about educating voters, that we’re doing it the right way,” Dermody said. “Like Madison said, citizenship takes an effort, and if we don’t make an effort, then we will lose it.”
Dermody further said that, unlike Oklahoma’s dismal voting statistics, Rogers County has a robust, active voting public.
“Rogers County has 84 percent of our electorate registered to vote. We’re 10 to 15 percent higher than other counties as far as voter turnout goes,” she said. “We also had 74 percent that voted in the last general election. On midterms, we normally have 48 to 52 percent that vote in Rogers County, but I suspect we’ll see a much higher number than that this time. As poor as other counties or even the state’s voting statistics may be, we’re much more active as a county than we are as a state. We’re forging trails.”
Following her comments, Dermody presented a brief slideshow that expounded on certain aspects of elections, such as the prohibition of electioneering within 300 feet of the polls, proof of ID, persons allowed in election enclosures, vote disclosure and more.
Dermody concluded by giving several non-partisan, non-profit websites on which voters can do their own research, such as https://justfacts.votesmart.org/, https://www.opensecrets.org/ and https://www.factcheck.org/
The discussion concluded with the panelists collectively encouraging audience members to become informed voters and to cast their vote based on what’s most important to them.
The 2022 midterm election is scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2022.
To register or for more information about the midterms or other upcoming elections, contact the Rogers County Election Board at 918-341-2965 or in person at 415 W. 1st Street in Claremore.