The rebuke of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 popular victory by the Electoral College stunted my belief in the power of a single vote. Yet, I have looked for the past four years toward the day I can exercise my right and privilege to vote for our nation’s president.
As Election Day approaches, I feel a hopeful ambivalence: a faith in my generation, knowing that, like me, this is likely the first national election many of my peers are eligible to vote in.
Simultaneously, though, each day brings increasing recognition of the real qualms Americans can — and do — have with a two-party system, and apathy with promises that political campaigns make, and then fall short of, without substantive results to show for in the daily lives of many.
Make no mistake, I’ll be casting my vote in the presidential election, mobilizing in support of the rhetoric, policy and respect I hope our country can unify behind. But, remembering 2016, I often feel a sense of powerlessness in my ability to make change with my vote in the national election.
I write this column to underscore the importance of local voting. For those of us from New York, or California, or Massachusetts, for example, maybe you’ve heard people say, “Well, it doesn’t really matter since our state always goes blue,” the way I have. If this applies to you, I want to make a case for you to switch your registration to your Ithaca address.
Ithaca is technically part of a ‘swing district’ in New York. Republican Representative Marc Molinaro won N.Y.’s 19th Congressional district, which includes Tompkins, Tioga and Cortland counties, by just 1.6 percent in 2022. The projections are the same now as they were 2 years ago.
The race for Ithaca’s house seat boils down to 4,495 votes. Cornell’s undergraduate population alone triples that number.
As students who spend a large portion of the year in Ithaca, part of New York’s 19th Congressional District, we do not discuss the impact our presence here in Ithaca has on residents nearly enough. Whether or not students or Ithaca natives like it, these transient college populations inevitably hike up housing costs for residents, put wear and tear on city roads and increase stress on Ithaca’s healthcare system.
The recent UAW strike at Cornell — and large-scale member participation — clearly indicates that Cornell’s presence is icing local workers out of the area while being slow to respond to cost of living adjustments and not paying its fair share of taxes to the city.
As Cornell students, we need to take a sincere interest and stake in the community that we are a part of. Regardless of how long we are here, for better or for worse, we are here.
My hometown in New York’s Southern Tier is located in the same Congressional district as Ithaca. I will be voting absentee for Josh Riley because I believe that all of the district’s constituents deserve reproductive healthcare and housing support rather than Molinaro’s proven subscription to dangerous Republican party viewpoints on the national level.
Riley has demonstrated a commitment on the federal level to ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment, which will protect the rights of Americans to make healthcare decisions regarding their own bodies when it comes to abortion.
Molinaro, on the other hand, voted twice in 2023 for Jim Jordan, a staunchly conservative Ohio Republican, and the author of a national abortion ban bill, to be Speaker of the House of Representatives when Jordan was the GOP nominee. Molinaro has since attempted to distance himself from this stance, notably in the face of his reelection campaign this fall. I, for one, am skeptical. Molinaro voted for the Born Alive Survivors Act, which would put healthcare providers at risk of criminal charges for providing standard reproductive care. How can we trust Molinaro to uphold healthcare rights given his hardline record?
Many Cornell students and faculty will be able to access reproductive healthcare in the U.S., no matter whether Roe is codified, because they can afford to travel to places where it is legal. Privilege, though, is not an excuse to ignore the very real access issue that will impact millions of Americans if Trump, with the support of House Republicans like Molinaro, is able to allow the issue to be decided by the states, as he claimed in the presidential debate earlier this month.
I highly encourage you to research candidates and propositions (New York will also have Proposition 1 on the ballot this fall, which would strengthen the state’s ERA) and cast your own vote during the presidential election: making an investment in the future of our country and your desire for it to be the best place that it can be for all while conceding that no candidate is perfect. That being said, making a difference locally to uphold protections for communities negatively affected by opportunistic leadership can be all the more gratifying.
Consider casting your vote locally to send a representative to the House who cares about the basic health and dignity of all community members across the board, not just when he’s up for re-election.
Carlin Reyen is a fourth year student in the College of Arts and Sciences. Her fortnightly column Just Carlin’ It Like It Is centers around student life, social issues, Cornell life hacks and the University’s interactions with the broader community. Carlin can be reached at [email protected].