Mail-in voting, missing signage and an unclear address might be a few of the factors contributing to low turnout at ASU’s first on-campus voting location in Tempe, officials said.
As of Thursday afternoon, only 15 voters had cast their ballots in the Tempe City Council primary election at the new voting location at Palo Verde West residential hall. Voting began Feb. 16 and ends today at 5 p.m.
Tempe City Clerk Jan Hort called the turnout “extremely low,” but said the city will still open the location during early voting for the general election in May, as originally planned. Following the general election, the new site will be reviewed, she said.
“When we evaluate it, we look for at least … a couple hundred voters,” Hort said. If people do not use the new location, it doesn’t pay to keep it open, she said.
Janet Maughan, an early voting clerk who works at the new site, said having permanent early-voting lists has decreased the number of in-person voters during early voting.
Arizona established permanent early voting lists in 2007, allowing listed voters to receive early voting ballots by mail for each election.
Hort verified Tempe mail-in ballots have increased and in-person voting has decreased since the creation of these lists.
The disappearance of signs leading to the polling location has been another problem over the past few weeks, said Rudi O’Keefe-Zelman, vice president of policy for the Undergraduate Student Government.
“A lot of our signs have gone down,” she said.
O’Keefe-Zelman, a political science and journalism junior, said she was unsure whether students were stealing the signs or if maintenance workers were accidentally taking them.
Directions to the site might also be confusing voters. The Tempe Web site doesn’t mention the voting location is in the Palo Verde West residential hall, but instead lists the building address 330 E. University Drive and says the location is the ASU Safety Escort Service office.
On Google Maps, the address appears as the Fulton Center, which is located adjacent to Palo Verde West.
“We are sort of hidden,” said Viviane Piaget, an early voting clerk at the new location.
The front doors to the polling site are hidden behind the residential building itself — out of view for drivers heading down University Drive who might be searching for the location.
But student reluctance to vote might also be a contributing factor, Piaget said.
“Do [students] really care?” she said. “They should care. But we don’t know if they do.”
O’Keefe-Zelman, the 14th person to vote at the site, said the polling location is intended to show legislators that students care about the decisions lawmakers make.
“The long-term vision is making students a viable voting block,” she said.
USG has been doing all it can to inform students and faculty members of the polling location, from printing advertisements to sending out mass e-mails, O’Keefe-Zelman said. The new location is part of USG’s goal to improve its relationship with Tempe, she said.
“We don’t want ASU to be a huge island in the middle of the city,” she said. “We want to be integrated with it.”
Last week, a forum featuring the Tempe City Council candidates was held on the Tempe campus. In January, Mayor Hugh Hallman held a taping of his monthly TV show “Let’s Talk Tempe” in the Memorial Union.
ASU employee Alissa Pierson, who voted at the new site on her lunch break on Wednesday, said she found the polling location convenient.
“I would definitely ask ASU not to give up,” she said. “I would definitely keep it [but] maybe find a more visible location.”
The new polling location will open again from April 22 to May 14 for general election early voting.
Reach the reporter at kjdaly@asu.edu
