As I approached the first table at my established local polling station, pen in hand, ready to rock the vote, I was informed by a nice woman with a smile on her face that I was about to be very sad. She told me when I had applied for a new operator license last summer, the Secretary of State had switched my polling location without informing me. She referred to it as “a little trick they use.” I asked if there was any process to remedy this, informing her I could prove my current residency, provide government identification and could show we were located at my last self-registered polling location. What more could be reasonably required? No luck. I would have to return home to my hometown if I wished to vote. This was not fiscally or logistically possible for me to do in time.

I am crushed. My dismay does not come from knowing that my voice will not be heard this election (the pragmatist in me knows my vote had almost no chance to impact any outcome); it comes from knowing we live in a nation that seems set on using a confusing, outdated and often disenfranchising system of voting.

We, as a nation, cannot claim to value the civic participation of the individual above all else and then simultaneously deny nearly every measure proposed to make voting an easy process. I challenge the notion that having a say in who our leaders are is a privilege and honor. The endless series of hoops one must jump through to vote creates the illusion of protecting the integrity of elections, while really making something that should be as simple as choosing A,B or C into an obstacle course of bureaucracy and technicalities.

I am currently on the dean’s list and have worked for multiple campaigns, and I did not know the Secretary of State could change a person’s polling location if he or she got a new driver’s license and not even inform the person. But my situation displays one of the many technicalities that turn away voters. While my voice will not be heard in this election, hopefully it can be heard as a spokesperson for the legion of hopeful voters who were told today they could not vote based on technicalities, frivolous restrictions and misinformation.

Without the ability to participate in government when it matters most, our country willingly erodes the foundation on which it stands. The time to re-examine election procedure is now.

Tyler Gross, Social relations and policy sophomore