AU students express mixed feelings about their plans to vote in the election to recall California's governor Tuesday.
The first part of the two-part ballot will ask California residents to vote either yes or no to the recall. In the second part, voters will be asked to choose a candidate to succeed Democratic Gov. Gray Davis should the recall in the first part pass.
Junior Peggy Tierney will take advantage of the Election Day's coinciding with fall break by going home to Sunnyvale, Calif., in the San Francisco Bay Area.
"This election is very important to me," she said. "Had I not been at home, I definitely would have obtained an absentee ballot."
Tierney said she plans to vote against the recall and for California's democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante. "He is already well experienced as deputy governor, and pretty much the most qualified," she said.
"I don't think the recall election is a good idea at all," Tierney said. "I view it as a last-ditch effort by the Republicans to take what they couldn't really get the first time, when they had the chance to run a competent campaign.
"No one is thrilled with Davis," she continued. "That is why there are elections every four years."
However, Washington Semester student Garrett Fahy of Simi Valley, Calif., said that he plans to vote for Republican candidate and action film star Arnold Schwarzenegger.
"California is in bad shape," Fahy said, "and irrespective of whomever wants to take credit for our fiscally disastrous situation, Gov. Davis presided over most of it."
Still some students say they doubt the benefit of a recall.
"Republicans have been shut out of power for years now in the Golden State, making many extremely frustrated," sophomore Gene Fielden said.
Fielden regards the recall effort as "an exploitation of a legal loophole that allows for only a small percentage of those who voted in the last election to sign a petition demanding a recall," a petition, which was unsolicited by those who signed it, he argued.
"[Conservatives] descended upon the state's grocery shops and banks, accosting passers-by with the petition," Fielden said.
He plans to vote by absentee ballot.
"I am fully committed to voting against the entire recall," he said. "The second question posed will result in a vote for Bustamante."
Sophomore David Cushman, of San Rafael, Calif., also plans to vote for Bustamante. He thinks the recall "comes at the worst possible time for California."
Fahy agrees that California is experiencing hardship.
"California's only hope at this pivotal juncture is to get someone in office, regardless of qualifications, that will say 'no' to spending and 'yes' to some form of fiscal responsibility," Fahy said. "Schwarzenegger can threaten, or indeed, veto Democrat spending bills.
"Schwarzenegger does not have any experience that makes him fit to run the government," Fahy said, "but as Davis so amply demonstrates, political experience does not mean political ability or political competence."
While many at AU prepare to vote, students at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles express indifference, according to USC sophomore Didier Diels.
"Los Angeles is a pretty apathetic place when it comes to politics, and the USC student body is no different," Diels said.
Some AU students feel the same, and do not plan to vote. As one AU student from the Los Angeles area admitted, "I'm not even registered to vote"
