OCC greets early voters

Monday was just another day at OCC: running to class, stopping by the library and voting for president of the United States.

For five hours Monday, OCC was host to its own early-voting site, where any registered Orange County voter could walk into a trailer and have a say in this year’s elections. According to the Orange County Registrar of Voters, 166 people made their voices heard in the brightly colored trailer from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. that day.

It was the first time OCC has ever hosted early voting, political science professor Ann Williams said. Williams played a part in making it happen after a guest from the county registrar visited her classes and mentioned that the agency sends out a mobile voting unit as part of its outreach efforts.

“I knew it went to Cal State Fullerton because I have a very dear friend who arranges that,” she said. “I asked him, ‘Are you going to come here to Orange Coast?’ He said, ‘We haven’t been asked to come here.’ So I went to the student government, and they ran with it.”

Community college students are more likely than nearly anyone to find such voting useful, Williams said. In addition to the fact that many students are busy with jobs and classes, they are also mostly first-time voters, she added.

“Think back when you were that age,” she said. “Getting involved in government at all was an intimidating thought. And our voter registration processes are not exactly the most simple procedures.”

Discussions of the youth vote have loomed large in stories about the Nov. 4 presidential election, but perhaps because California appears solidly Democratic on the presidential level, youth voters at OCC were often more interested in the propositions, especially those on controversial issues like same-sex marriage and the treatment of animals.

Nearly every student interviewed offered an opinion on Proposition 8, which would end same-sex marriage in California. In an unscientific set of voter interviews, most opposed it.

“At first I didn’t care one way or another [about Proposition 8],” said Mitchell Hutchinson, 20. “But the fact that there’s people out there who care so much about not letting people get married definitely got me paying attention [and voting no].”

But conservative positions weren’t absent either.

“I’m concerned about keeping government out of my pocketbook,” 20-year-old Cassie Knox said. “Most of these propositions cost a lot of money, and I’m voting no on those.”

In general, however, young voters said their friends were more passionate about politics this year than any time they could remember.

“I think this election, young voters are a lot more active than they were a couple years ago,” said Alex Anderson, 19. “Maybe it’s just my age or my friends, but they seem a lot more interested.”

MICHAEL ALEXANDER may be reached at (714) 966-4618 or at michael.alexander@latimes.com.