I was shocked when I found out that Jon wasn’t going to vote in the 2004 presidential elections. His political apathy seemed a complete disconnect from the passionate voice I had heard echoing down our freshman dorm’s hallways. He vehemently opposed Bush’s proposed ban on gay marriage, overspending, and, of course, Iraq. As an opinionated college student, Jon would be clawing at the doors of the voting booths for an opportunity to shape his nation’s government, or so I thought. I was wrong. Rather than exercise his constitutional right, Jon has continued to weave a convoluted web of unjustified excuses for his voting truancy.

It seems as if his un-punched ballot only reflects a larger trend of political apathy on Stanford’s campus. On election day, I stroll into voting stations, right past the non-existent lines of eagerly waiting Stanford students. Maybe I just vote too late in the day?

Or take last fall, when I was abroad in Beijing. With an impending pivotal political upset looming on the horizon, I was the only one out of 22 Stanford students to send in a vote.

It’s not that Stanford students don’t care about politics. We do. Most students quickly jump at the opportunity to discuss this year’s presidential primaries. However, at Stanford and other universities around the country, a depressing number of able student-voters fail to cast a ballot.

When I asked Jon why such a politically passionate individual would choose a path of political apathy over political action, he had a surprising response: “I don’t feel like I deserve to vote.” Deserve to vote? Last time I checked, voting was a right afforded to all U.S. citizens over age 18. Jumping through hoops to earn one’s ballot was abolished decades ago. “I’m just not an informed voter,” he said, “and I don’t want to make the mistake of voting for a bad candidate just because I don’t know enough.”

I hear statements reminiscent of the one above on too regular a basis. While many students in my dorm have even been campus recruiters for various presidential candidates, political fervor is far from universal. Just the other day as our dorm representative went door to door, voter registration forms in hand, several individuals muttered the same “uniformed voter” rationalization for non-registration.

Hearing Stanford students cite lack of information as a justification for political apathy sends chills down my spine. For one, simply due to immersion in such a politically charged campus, the average college student probably knows more then the average voter. And almost all of us have a vision for the future and possess opinions about the steps needed to achieve a better world — whether that be through increased support for the arts, a refurbished education system, or a less pre-emptive foreign policy. Voting by one’s principles (principles informed by a rich campus dialog that often flows through our halls) is not only a step towards guiding the world towards one’s vision, it’s an educated one.

Argument number two: Stanford students make plenty of other decisions that impact their own lives and the lives of others with far less information than they probably have about the upcoming primaries. Even though most of the freshman class doesn’t read half of their assigned IHUM reading, you never hear them complain, “Oh, I don’t deserve to write that paper.” Another example: observe Stanford’s overactive hookup culture on any Friday night. After a few beers and a few sweet words, neither party will abandon ship on the way to the bedroom with the words, “I don’t deserve to sleep with this person right now... I just don’t know enough.”

Every citizen in this country deserves to vote. It’s a right granted to every American and it’s a right that should be exercised just as liberally as free speech. And while being an informed voter is still important, Stanford students shouldn’t feel like they have to read a treatise on each candidate’s position in order to create an informed decision.

I don’t know if Jon will ever change his feelings about voting. In this column, I’ve tried to distill over three years of persuasion in the hope that hearing my arguments again will convince him to cast a ballot in this year’s primaries: Jon, truly uninformed voters don’t know they deserve the right to vote.