Study: College students don't know where to buy stamps to mail in absentee ballots

A focus group in Virginia determined that college students were not mailing in their absentee ballots because they did not know where to buy stamps.

Credit: Justin Sullivan

Credit: Justin Sullivan

A focus group in Virginia determined that college students were not mailing in their absentee ballots because they did not know where to buy stamps.

Give me liberty, unless I cannot find stamps.

>> Read more trending news

A focus group in Virginia discovered that many college students who obtained absentee ballots to vote did not send them back because they did not know where to buy a stamp, WTOP reported.

“One thing that came up, which I had heard from my own kids but I thought they were just nerdy, was that the students will go through the process of applying for a mail-in absentee ballot, they will fill out the ballot, and then, they don’t know where to get stamps,” Lisa Connors, with the Fairfax County Office of Public Affairs, told the television station. “That seems to be like a hump that they can’t get across.”

The irony here is that Patrick Henry famously opposed the Stamp Act in 1765 in the Virginia House of Burgesses, and also gave his famous “give me liberty, or give me death” speech to the same legislative body.

The focus group included college interns from across numerous departments in Fairfax County, WTOP reported.

“They all agreed that they knew lots of people who did not send in their ballots because it was too much of a hassle or they didn’t know where to get a stamp,” Connors said.

“Across the board, they were all nodding and had a very spirited conversation about, ‘Oh yeah, I know so many people who didn’t send theirs in because they didn’t have a stamp.’”