Each Tuesday in July, The Dispatch will feature stories from young voters who will cast their first ballots for president this November, as well as those from veteran voters remembering their first time voting for president. The general election is set for Nov. 8.
Jacob Craig, 19
Jacob Craig registered to vote in spring 2015. The Brooksville native and Mississippi State University sophomore plans to vote in his first presidential election this November but said he isn’t keen on either of the two major party nominees.
“The main thing I look for in a candidate is someone who I think isn’t afraid to compromise but will also stay true to the values that got them elected,” Craig said.
He finds potential handling of controversial situations crucial factors in determining which political candidate he will support.
“Israel is one of the main issues I’m very adamant about. I want a lot of support for Israel because of how I grew up and my religion,” said Craig, who practices Judaism at Temple B’nai Israel in Columbus.
“I really find how people are going to handle increasing racial tensions important, especially with how it’s started to move to violence,” he added. ‘With all these shootings, gun violence and gun control [are among] my higher priorities.”
He said gaining access to a gun should not be so easy.
“One of my friends was able to buy an AR-15 for $800 in about 45 minutes, and the reason it took that long was because he couldn’t decide on what gun he wanted,” Craig said. “So I just think that, yes, we should all be able to own a gun, but there are some guns that should be off the market. And it needs to be a little stricter.”
Craig anticipates choosing a candidate based on whose ideology most closely aligns with his own.
“How I feel about my ideals is set in stone, but who I think will act on them aren’t,” Craig said.
He said he may not know “100 percent” who he’ll vote for until he’s at the voting booth, but he’s considering Libertarian Gary Johnson, a third-party candidate. Craig said if he doesn’t think Johnson could win, or if it came down to keeping Donald Trump out of The White House, he would vote for Hillary Clinton.
The young voter said family, friends and the summer camp at which he serves as a counselor strongly influence his viewpoints.
“Anyone who I deem as a role model, what they say, I usually take more of their advice,” he said.
Craig does not consider himself politically active but said he stays informed on prominent current issues, paying attention to news sources he finds unbiased and social media outlets.
In addition to gaining information from television and online, the mechanical engineering major hears about candidates and issues at school.
Craig thinks young voters are becoming more involved in the political scene as political candidates try more effectively to appeal to young voters.
“I think [politicians] are starting to strike on the issues that young people are looking for,” he said. “(Also) young people (are) realizing that ‘just because it doesn’t directly affect me, doesn’t mean I shouldn’t care about it.'”
Like previously interviewed first-time voters, Craig stresses the importance of education and information in helping a person determine their true ideals.
“You should form your own opinions so that you’re not voting for someone just because you think that’s what they said,” Craig suggested. “People need to really know what they want and know their own values before they pick a candidate.”
Qua Austin, 64
Qua Austin hails from a socially and politically active family. The Columbus resident grew up in West Point during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Her family members’ involvement in civil rights campaigns influenced Austin’s voting decisions as she prepared to vote in her first presidential election in 1972.
“I witnessed the attempts of my family members registering to vote,” Austin said. “They were asked ludicrous questions they were not going to get the answer to…so I saw the casting of a vote as being a way of casting a vote for change.”
Austin witnessed the activism of her uncles and her mother’s friends who rode in Freedom Summer, the 1964 statewide voter registration project in Mississippi which fought against racial discrimination in the U.S. political system — discrimination marked by seemingly impassable literacy tests and poll taxes targeted at eligible black voters. The project sought to increase black voting in the South, as less than 7 percent of eligible black voters in Mississippi were registered to vote in 1962, according to history.com.
“To be able to vote was what a lot of people had lost their lives for,” Austin said. “It was about getting the rights to citizenship, something that we all should have been afforded under the law.”
Her family’s involvement in Freedom Summer inspired Austin and her friends to travel door-to-door in Greenville, her home at the time, in 1970 and 1971 to register eligible locals to vote.
Austin registered to vote in 1971 and voted absentee the next year, as she attended Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts. She voted in the first presidential election following the ratification of the 26th amendment in 1971, which lowered the national voting age from 21 to 18.
At age 19, Austin cast her 1972 ballot for the democratic candidate, George McGovern, a senator from South Dakota, who lost to incumbent Republican president Richard Nixon by 503 electoral votes.
Austin said she voted Democrat because she hoped for change.
“I wish I could be less about party than I am about the well-being of the country,” Austin said. “But [the Democratic party] spoke to my childhood and helping to get folks registered to vote, having seen what poverty looked like in the Delta and even in North Mississippi.”
Austin described the 1960s as a period of “change” and “concern,” so she said the 1972 election was “a very exciting time.”
“People wanted equal rights and they wanted a better society, so the turnout was very good that year,” she said.
“On registration day for voting, you just went in and filled out an application. It was no longer ‘how many words are there in the constitution’ or ‘how many steps are there to the capital of the state of Mississippi?,'” Austin added, posing possible “literacy test” questions.
Participating fully in American citizenship has been both a childhood dream and an adulthood duty for Austin, who has voted in every presidential election since her first in 1972.
“I can remember in elementary school looking forward to sixth grade because citizenship was taught in sixth grade,” Austin said. “Not only is [voting] a freedom in America, but I needed to pay homage to people who had worked so hard.”
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