Why is it so hard to vote? The day I turned 18, before I even considered buying a lottery ticket or purchasing tobacco products, I went to my town hall to register to vote. Registered and raring to go, I left the clerk’s office on that July day anxiously anticipating the February 5th primary and my initiation into the voting world. So why then was my vote not among those counted up last Tuesday? Well it’s a two part problem – and one that many college students share. There’s the absentee part, and then the ballot. I applied for one, but why did it never come?

They may call us lazy. They may call us indifferent, but I find it easier to believe that most new voters are more likely poorly informed when it comes to absentee ballots and the voting process in general.First of all, in order to apply for a ballot to be mailed to your residence at the time of an election – in our case, probably somewhere on the UMass campus or in the Amherst area – you need to be registered to vote in your state, which you can do at your city or town hall. Next, you need to fill out another form specifically for your absentee ballot. This form confirms your primary residence or the one where you initially registered and asks for the address to which you would like your absentee ballot sent. And you need to do this for every election you wish to vote in. It will not be automatically sent to you for the general election if you applied for a primary ballot.A variety of things can go wrong. For one thing, if you have not yet registered three weeks prior to the election, you can forget it. Next, if you are like me – and make the mistake of trying to keep your options open – and register as “unenrolled” (or independent), you can forget it even more. There is a great deal of confusion surrounding whether or not registering for a party on your absentee ballot officially enrolls you in the party, or if you have to re-register as part of a party when you fill out your absentee ballot request form.On a side note, make sure you have stocked up on stamps ahead of time. That way you can send the ballot back so that it reaches your polling place by 8 p.m. on the day of the election.It may be helpful to check back with your town or city hall several days prior to when you are expecting to receive your ballot in the mail. In this way, you may be able to preclude an “Absentee Ballot Rejection Notice,” a form which makes all other voting forms seem absolutely pointless. Chances are, you’ll end up with your rejection notice five days before the election (when the absentee ballot itself is supposed to have arrived), meaning you will probably have to iron out the problems from Amherst, over the phone, and as quickly as possible, if you have any hope of voting.I bring this up because I was the unlucky recipient of such a notice, with the rejection reason cited as “not registered to vote.” Hmm. Okay, I can give you the exact date, tell you what the woman in the clerk’s office was wearing at the time when I registered and promise you that I most certainly did register to vote. Out of your control completely – and these are the factors that really make leaving the country sound appealing – are the filing and mail delivery errors that can make fulfilling your civic duty feel like finding a summer job in July. In my case, the registration form was just never entered into the computer system. Upon my prodding, the form itself was located, and several days before the primary, I was finally officially registered.So you ask, if my absentee ballot never shows, can I just vote in Amherst? To that I am saddened to inform you the answer is a resounding “no.” But if it helps you at all to know that this election wasn’t “the biggie,” I offer such condolences. But really, with a democratic voting system that already places so much emphasis on delegates and electoral colleges, doesn’t every bit of influence you have count “big time?”My advice to you for the November election is that you choose your candidate early, and investigate about filling out a ballot for your preferred candidate in advance, at the town/city hall, as opposed to having them mail it to you. After all, you don’t want to be at the mercy of the weather or a national emergency that might halt the postal service, a roommate with thieving tendencies, or a “filing error” of any kind. Just remember that what you believe counts, and to fight for it by asking questions and demanding answers – not to mention engaging in that overrated practice of voting.

Lauren Rockoff is a Collegian columnist. She can be reached at [email protected].