Law and Justice Club to Host Campus Primary

by Morgan German

Concordia’s Law and Justice Club will be sponsoring a primary from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Tuesday, March 1. Concordia students can cast their votes for a presidential candidate just like they would in a state primary.

The primary will have two polling stations. One polling place will be near the 10:31 Coffee Shop in the top level of Janzow Campus Center, and the second will be outside the Thom Leadership Education Center auditorium.

“Students just have to show up, and we’ll give them a paper ballot that they can fill out and hand back,” said junior Jacob Meyer, president of the Law and Justice Club.

In addition to listing presidential candidates’ names, the ballot will also include a few questions about Concordia students’ views on various issues.

The ballot will only take three to five minutes to fill out, which will allow students to stop and vote between classes.

Meyer and fifth-year senior Collin Christiansen are organizing this event along with Dr. Kathy Miller and professor Tobin Beck.

“We want to have the primary on Super Tuesday, which is March 1,because that is when a large chunk of states all have their primaries on the same day,” Meyer said. “We figured that this would allow our field of candidates to be as large as possible versus having one or two candidates on each side because the other candidates dropped out after the Super Tuesday primaries.”

Meyer said he got the idea to host this event from a similar event he participated in during high school.

“I thought it was a great idea to bring this kind of event back here, especially since most students here are eligible to vote,” Meyer said.

Meyer hopes that this event will encourage Concordia students to learn about politics, vote and encourage others to vote.

We are not trying to promote one side or the other, we are just trying to promote people getting out and exercising their right of voting,” Meyer said. “Politics should be important to Concordia students because they are United States citizens, and things that happen in politics affect every United States citizen. The people they elect to power will make decisions that will affect their lives, and even college students have the ability to have a say in who is elected by participating in the election process.”

Meyer and others will be at the polling stations to assist anyone who would like to vote in the primary.

In addition to the primary, the Law and Justice Club organizes other events throughout the year such as bringing in speakers related to law and criminal justice and organizing panels on current issues in the United States that affect college students.