Personalities prevail over election issues

Candidates’ personalities were more important than issues for some students who voted in local and state elections Saturday at the Curry Building, but they generally knew little about either.\n“If it’s a name I’ve heard of before, I might know a little bit about them,” incoming freshman Elizabeth Wegener said.\nTuesday, Indiana’s Democratic election primaries will matter on a national scale for the first time in 16 years. The widespread media attention the Indiana primaries have received because of the undecided Democratic presidential race this year has pushed twice as many Hoosiers out to the polls as in 2004, according to the Indiana Secretary of State’s office. This has caused more students to vote in local and state primaries as well.\nMany students, eager to get in on the action, voted early on Saturday at the Curry Building, 290 W. Seventh St.. \nWegener, who took advantage of Saturday’s early voting because she will be working the polls Tuesday, said she was motivated to come out because she wanted to vote in the Republican presidential primary.\nBecause the main issue she wanted to vote on was Iraq, she said, she was not sure what issues were important on a local or state level. Instead, she was choosing to vote for local and state candidates based on what she knew about them as people.\nLaw student Ben Ellis said he, too, was voting for local and state candidates based on the character and integrity of specific candidates rather than where they stood on particular issues.\n“Since the candidates are so close on issues, I don’t feel like you can separate one out,” Ellis said.\nAs a law student and worker at Barack Obama’s campaign office, he said he knows many of the candidates personally and was voting based on how he felt about his interactions with them and whether they came off \nas reliable.\n“I know these people, and I trust them ... They have an integrity I can vouch for,” \nhe said.\nEllis said that although he was there to vote in the presidential primary, it was not his main motivation for also finding out more about local and state primaries.\n“I actually would have voted already on local and state issues,” he said.\nJunior Maura Schonwald, who voted Saturday because she will be out of town Tuesday, said she came out to vote in the Democratic primary and only did a little research on the candidates for local and state elections. \nHowever, unlike Ellis and Wegener, Schonwald said she votes for issues over personalities. Issues that are of particular importance to her, she said, include “the environment, criminal punishment and education.”\nSchonwald also acknowledged that the importance of a position plays into how she votes. She said city council seats are important, as well as the seats of governor \nand mayor.\nEllis also said he cast votes for certain seats but not others, but that was mostly because he didn’t know anyone who was running for those seats rather than because he assumed they were less important.\n“With state and local,” Ellis said, “it’s more about character.”