Election Reflections: Collecting Project
Utah State University Libraries, Special Collections and Archives
Election: 2018 Federal Midterm Elections
Name: Andrew Woodruff
Self-Description: I love Ultimate Frisbee; am a musical theatre enthusiast; and hold the self-proclaimed record of number-of-chicken-hearts-eaten-at-Rodizio-Grill, which is currently at 27 (do you see how I cheated and pretty much had three short sentences in a single sent
Date and time of submission: 11/14/2018 10:20:22 AM
Country:
United States
Birth Year:
1993
State:
Utah
Gender:
Male
County:
Utah County
Ethnicity:
White
City:
Saratoga Springs
Hispanic:
No
Political Affiliation:
United Utah Party
LGBT:
No
Voted in Election: Yes
First time voter? No
What prompted you to vote as a first time voter? N/A
Posted this reflection to social media? No
Social media venue: None
Reflection:
The 2018 election was exciting for me. The backdrop to this election was, of course, the 2016 election, where Utah showed that it did not want to choose between two poor candidates. Then came the special election of 2017, where a party that has just barely formed, the United Utah Party, put forward a candidate, Jim Bennett, who achieved nearly 9% of the vote with little-to-no fundraising efforts. It is against that backdrop that I was very excited with the results of the 2018 election. Utah showed through its votes that it wants to vote for reasonable candidates that are not beholden to a specific ideology. Eric Eliason got 11% of the vote in his run for a seat in the US House of Representatives. Local state offices were hotly contested too, with Michele Weeks, Alex Castagno, and Amy Martz getting 39%, 34%, and 33% of the vote in their races, respectively. Utahns are showing that they are fed up with having to choose from only two candidates. Utahns are showing with their votes that they care more about solving problems than pushing a specific agenda. Utahns are standing up and saying that "compromise" is not, in fact, a dirty word. Utahns are standing against the increasing extremism and partisanship that has been present and growing in the Democrat and Republican parties in recent year. And all of that is VERY exciting to me.
Item Call Number: SCAFOLK061-Fed-Mid-2018-017
U.S. Election Reflections Collecting Project
