Editor’s Note: This column responds to Seth Berman’s Oct. 29 column titled Your Vote Won’t Matter, But You Still need to use it.
I write in response to a recent Sun column that claims the votes of Cornell students “won’t matter” because New York is not a presidential swing state. Although the column ultimately encourages students to vote in spite of this supposed irrelevance, it is irresponsible and ill-informed to claim that our votes at Cornell don’t matter.
Despite New York’s solid-blue status on the presidential level — not to mention Ithaca’s political leanings — our congressional district (NY-19) is one of the most competitive in the country. In 2022, the race was decided by less than 4,500 votes, or 1.6 percent. Our location in a swing district means that the votes of Cornell students could very well decide which party controls the House of Representatives for the next two years.
The column’s assertion that Cornell students will have a “(nonexistent) [sic] impact on the result of the national election” is not true. It’s clear that this refers to the presidential election, but it is bewildering and irresponsible to ignore Cornell’s influence on what is quite possibly the most important House race in the country. Telling students their vote doesn’t matter may reflect an unfortunate reality at Harvard or Brown, but it is downright false at Cornell. By adopting this cliché as its framing, the column ignores the reality of our district in pursuit of an inapplicable theoretical argument about voting in safe races. Its failure to mention the fact that Ithaca ballots will, in fact, decide a competitive national race is unbelievably reckless.
To reiterate, I’m not encouraging you to vote because “local races matter too,” or because it’s the right thing to do; nor am I making any of the other arguments for voting in a district where your vote really won’t change anything. I’m not making these arguments because they’re not applicable here. Our congressional district is incredibly close. Don’t fall victim to the belief that since we live in a blue area in a blue state, our votes don’t matter. That blue area is lumped in with a lot of red, and that makes everyone’s vote important here. When the stakes are this high, you ignore the power of your vote at your own peril.
You should not vote because of an abstract concept of civic duty; you should not vote to send a message; you should not vote just because you can. You should vote because it actually, truly matters in this district.
– Jacob Weinstein ’26
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