To help her fellow Rogers State University students make informed decisions when heading to the polls Nov. 8, Victoria Middleton recently compiled a non-partisan voting guide for the upcoming election.
Middleton, a senior who is double majoring in political science and American history, is president of the National Political Science Honor Society, Pi Sigma Alpha, at RSU. To encourage civic engagement and help inform her fellow students about the candidates in the election, she put together a 2022 Voter Guide “by students and for students.”
“One of the reasons college students specifically aren’t voting is because they feel uninformed about the issues and the candidates, many of whom don’t campaign on the things that people my age care about, such as, what they (candidates) are going to do about higher education,” Middleton said. “So, I reached out to all the people running for office, from the local to the state level, to ask them their opinions on issues specific to college-aged students.”
Questions Middleton put to the candidates included: What will you do for higher education? With the power and limits of your office, how will you encourage a better functioning economy? What will you do with the power and limits of your office to support racial justice?
Candidates that responded to Middleton’s inquiries included James Lankford (R), Madison Horn (D), Kenneth Blevins (L), Michael Delaney (I), Robert Murphy (L), Kevin Stitt (R), Chris Powell (L), and others. Candidates that did not reply to Middleton are denoted as such.
“I reached out to each (candidate) roughly four times to get their answers, so each of them had several opportunities to respond,” Middleton said. “All in all, I worked on it for about a month and – and this is something we felt was very important – we made it as non-partisan as possible.”
Early voting begins Wednesday, Nov. 2, and election day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.
To view the 2022 Voter Guide online, visit https://portal.printingcenterusa.com/embed/embedflipbook.aspx?code=434572&title=voter%20guide&desc=voter%20guide%20for%20RSU%20students%20