ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014 With the Nov. 3 general election less than a month away, students at USF\u2019s St. Petersburg campus are weighing candidates and ballot issues as they prepare to vote.<\/p>\n
Students on campus said their reasons for voting vary, but several pointed to local issues, statewide ballot measures and candidate stances as factors shaping their decisions.<\/p>\n
Cooper Bullard, a chemical engineering student at USF, said he turned 18 in March and plans to vote in his first election.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think a lot of it is the novelty of it, but also I\u2019ve just had that instilled in me since I was really young,\u201d Bullard said. \u201cI think it\u2019s important to vote. I think people don\u2019t realize that if everybody thinks that their impact doesn\u2019t matter, then nothing will happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bullard said he has been studying his St. Petersburg ballot, including Amendment 3, the Homestead tax exemption and a possible tax increase in St. Petersburg for storm infrastructure projects.<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, that\u2019s what I care more about than the candidates, because I feel like they\u2019re going to do what they\u2019re going to do, no matter what, when they\u2019re in office,\u201d Bullard said. \u201cBut that\u2019s something that I have a direct impact on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other students said candidate positions are driving their choices. Cormac Hummel, a marketing student at USF, said land use is one of his top issues.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want data centers built on public Florida land,\u201d Hummel said.<\/p>\n
Sasha Brown, a digital communications student at USF, said she is voting for the second time in Tampa and wants to know where candidates stand on issues including abortion and immigration.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just feel like everything is biased,\u201d Brown said. \u201cA lot of stuff that you learn from is bias, and I feel like you\u2019re not going to actually make the change you want if you don\u2019t know anything about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not every student on campus will vote on Florida issues. Adelaide Murray, a business analytics student at USF and a North Carolina resident, said she will be voting by mail.<\/p>\n
Murray said she believes voters should support leaders who speak out about systemic issues.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, the most important thing that I\u2019ve been seeing is the things about the Cornell thing and just \u2014 the leaders that are in place are the people who can actually make changes,\u201d Murray said.<\/p>\n
The voter registration deadline has already passed. Mail-in ballots must be requested by Oct. 22, and early voting begins Oct. 24.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014 With the Nov. 3 general election less than a month away, students at USF\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":422712,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[3140,4069,115,596,99,202,204,203,199,201,200,135,835],"class_list":["post-422711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-calvin-lewis","tag-news","tag-pinellas-county","tag-politics","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-tampa","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422711\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/422712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}