Handholding at CU

If part of the college experience is to develop a well-rounded person, then providing easy access to allow students to register to vote seems like a logical piece of the puzzle…unless you’re CU Regent Steve Bosley, to whom it seems like handholding.

As I read the article about the CU Regents voting to approve adding a link to the student portal allowing students to register to vote, I was sincerely surprised that anyone would have a problem with that move, but the article referenced two Republican Regents who aren’t exactly in favor of the move, even though they ended up voting to approve the measure.
Of all the things that we may do to hold a student’s hand on our campuses, allowing them an easy option to register to vote seems really (really really really) low on the list. The two Regents identified as having some opposition to the measure, did so basically because they feel that registering to vote and voting are things that people should want to do, cherish, and take some responsibility to do.

My question is…how is placing a link in the student portal somehow diminishing a student’s desire to want to vote, and sense of responsibility around being a voter?

It seems like a good thing and really just a response to changing expectations of citizens / students to provide convenient access to voter registration. Most institutions have a portal that pulls information from numerous places together in one place based on the needs of the user. Educational institutions are required to provide voter registration information to students, so placing that link in the student portal just makes common sense to me and is a two-fer (satisfies the mandate to provide the information, and conveniently provides one more valuable resource for students).

Almost more interesting than the article itself were the comments to the article, which basically fell along party lines. Left-leaning commenters were making the argument that Republicans simply don’t want to make it easy for younger voters to get registered because those younger people tend to vote Democrat. One commenter, who opposed to the link in the portal, stated that anyone who would take advantage of this very easy way to get registered to vote, likely wouldn’t take the time to be an informed voter.

I’m still really unclear why anyone would be opposed to this, but have to admit that reading the comments to the article provided a couple of good chuckles. Two of my favorite comments were:
- "If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain. "
- “Republicans hate real democracy. Democrats are just inept at it.”