Out of 106 people surveyed at Eastern, 68 did not vote in Tuesday’s mid-term elections.

“I didn’t know anything was even going on,” one person said when asked if they voted. Other responses included, “I would have voted, but I didn’t register.”

Only 35.8 percent of those 106 made it to the polls despite the fact that three of the polling places were within walking distance of campus, and one site was in the Bridge Lounge of the Martin Luther King Jr. University Union.

The number of people in the county who voted dropped nearly 1,000 since the last election in 2002.

In 2002, of the 30,541 people who registered, only 15,406 voted. This year 30,632 people registered but only 14,441 actually voted.

The Blagojevich-Topinka campaign, which wielded negative ad after negative ad, caused many to turn their heads in disgust to the elections as a whole.

Political science professor John Morris agreed with this assumption in that when young people realize that elected officials care about them, there should be more participation.

“People will get involved when they think it affects them,” Morris said.

In response to the negative campaigning that was done prior to the election, Morris said that the negative campaign process is necessary in that studies have shown that it works and candidates know it. However, the same negative campaigning has caused some to stray from the polls.

“It’s kind of like a chicken and egg approach,” Morris said. “It’s going to take young people showing interest in politics and candidates showing interest in young people. A candidate running for office’s first step should be to show young people that they care about them.”

For sophomore Ryan Bennett, a business marketing major, this was his first chance to vote and he took advantage of it.

“It’s not too bad, not as bad as everyone makes it sound,” said Bennett in response to how he feels about the state of Illinois and the country as a whole. “I look to do it (vote) again.”

While freshmen Kayla Boss and Abby Steinway said they had voted before, they did not make the trip this past Tuesday.

“I didn’t get registered in time,” Boss said. “But I look to register in the next election.”

Some who did make it to the polls decided to write in a candidate on their ballot.

For the County Clerk’s Office to seriously consider a write-in candidate, the person must be registered at the County Court House.

According to County Clerk Betty Coffrin, there were about nine write-ins for governor calculated by early yesterday morning.

This practice isn’t uncommon.

In the 2004 presidential election, the State Board of Elections reported 13 official write-in candidates with a total of 4,384 votes.