17 Primary Rule

[UPDATE: Added final tally and County Board member's reaction below original article (quick jump link).]

For the Alex Keaton's of Champaign County who are way too young to get that reference, the N-G highlighted a civic minded primary voter and the primary rule that allows 17 year olds to vote if they'll be 18 by the day of the general election:

Sign up teens to vote
As Jimmie Kosmopoulos prepares to register classmates to vote today, the Cham paign Central High School senior hopes to accomplish two things.

First, add more young voters to the electorate.

“Even if it’s just a few extra votes from our schools, it matters,” he said.

Second, he hopes his activism — an all-day stakeout in the library, where he’ll have paper and online voter registration forms ready — will put to rest in some minds the tired stereotypes of youth apathy and ignorance toward political matters.

“I want to show people who may be apathetic to our generation that we know what we’re talking about,” he said.

“We are just as important (in the electorate) as they are.”

Both he and Sophia Ebel, a senior at University High School in Urbana, said they became concerned about the number of young voters after the 2016 election. They learned it wasn’t uncommon for their peers to be completely unaware that they could register to vote — in Illinois, citizens as young as 17 can register as long as they’re 18 by the date of the general election and are 17 by the date of the primary.

Final Tally and Reactions:

Jon Ebel highlighted updates on the registration drive's impressive tally for the day:

County Board District 6 incumbent and primary candidate Pattsi Petrie weighed in about the dangers of uneducated student voters on the article's comments:

Bravo, great to engage everyone in democracy. Increasing voter registration is excellent. This stated the omitted information is no discussion about educated voting...

Now for a bit of local voting history—CC has tax caps due to student vote, CC has a county heath board as a result of student vote, and a most recent example is the new position of elected county executive as the result of votes in one student-dominated precinct. So the questions are: did know the meaning of their vote, did the student educate his/her self about the results of the vote, did the student vote the way someone else told the student to vote, or. Other explanations. Bottom line these results stay with the local residents while the students move one. So being an educated voter is very important.

I imagine that some would read this as a reasonable admonishment to highlight the gravity of the issues being voted on to encourage people getting informed on the issues. Others might see this as a very thinly veiled attempt to discourage student voting simply because they, like most voters, lack the detailed understanding of those who work in local government. Regardless it came off as especially unfair to high school students. Like many college students, they often have long term vested interests in the community through family, friends, or becoming townies whether they planned on it or not.

One could argue that even the college students from out of town who choose to register and vote here have opted to do so over absentee options back home because they feel they have a vested interest in the community. If they're motivated enough to change registration to vote here, it's likely they care about the issues here. Perhaps that is naive of me.