Participation is essential for e-voting
by
nancyNAN & ireneHSU
Fourteen people walked onto the football fi eld at halftime of the Homecoming game on Oct. 15 as the crowd above them quieted and waited to see who would be crowned Homecoming King and Queen. Seventy percent of the crowd did not vote for those people. Voting for Homecoming was launched online this year and Lynbrook switched to EduBallot. Our new online voting system attempted to be more effi cient and decrease the number of wasted votes. Assistant Principal Ellen Reller also suggested the system could “help increase civic action and raise awareness of democratic participation.” However, the low number of voter participation suggests that even with the potential of the online ballot system, little will happen if people do not use it effectively. Only 30 percent of students participated in the nominations for the Homecoming Court and 35 percent voted in the fi nal election. Reller and junior Candace Liu, Elections Commissioner, sent out several emails through SchoolLoop and made daily announcements this month reminding students to vote. Students had 48 hours to vote, which is considerably more time to make a decision than the usual 15 or 20 minutes allotted under the old system. Even with the increased amount of voting time and information about the ballot, some students were not interested enough to vote. Sophomore
Eileen Chien adds, “I didn’t think that Homecoming was that important and I didn’t know what the candidates did, so I ended up not voting.” Though the small voter turnout doesn’t seem like a big deal, it corresponds to a larger issue: the shockingly low voter percentages for national elections. According to Gallup Polls, the expected voter turnout for young adults (aged 18 to 29) for the midterm election next month is only 19%. If students don’t even take the time to vote in a school election, they will have trouble voting in larger-scale elections, where the process is more complicated. As the percentage of people in our age group who vote decreases slightly year by year, we often take our right to vote for granted. Participation in public affairs is crucial to the functioning of our democratic society. If we ever want to be able to fully participate in national elections in the future, we should be more enthusiastic about comparatively smaller instances now, like the elections online. While it is true that some people had problems with the system or were unaccustomed to it, students are encouraged to send in suggestions to Liu and Reller. The problems can usually be remedied with time and experience as students become more comfortable with the system. However, the main problem is not the system itself; it is the lack of voter participation, and the only way to solve that is by voting and participating in future elections.
GRAPHIC ILLUSTRATION BY JASMINE MIRESHGHI
LHS students face political ignorance dianaDING
Everyone has seen those videos where a person with a video camera walks around interviewing pedestrians who come off as extremely ignorant when they can’t point out Kentucky on a map of the United States or name the Vice President. The sad truth is that our generation is not that much better. In a poll conducted by Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE), only 26 percent of those between age 15 and 24 believed that being involved in democracy and voting was ‘extremely important.’ In 2004, only 6 percent of American youth were following the presidential election. Our generation needs to be more informed about politics and our government. A few Lynbrook students have already gotten politically involved.
Junior Sandeep Peddada works with city councilmember Pete Constant and the Youth Advisory Council of San Jose (YAC) to voice the opinion of youth, helping to write budget proposals for the city, advocating to keep youth centers and libraries open, and helping serve the community in general. “I decided to join YAC because it was the only way for me to be able to do something that would make a difference in the city and I also think it is cool to see how I can actually have a direct voice in government issues,” says Peddada. According to senior Jonathan Zhang, who participates in the club Model United Nations, “Politics is something that people have to actively relate to them. Everything you do and all the laws are important to politics. People don’t really engage in it because it doesn’t affect their life.”
There are things students can do to be more politically informed. Watching or reading the news is a great place to start; humorous late night shows like The Daily Show with Jon Stewart show can lighten up political topics using satire. Students can have discussions with their classmates, teachers, or parents about various relevant political issues. Some Lynbrook students even participate fi rsthand in order to gain a better perspective. Senior Alick Xu, who interned with gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman over the summer, also realizes the importance of being politically aware. Xu adds, “A lot of students at Lynbrook say that they don’t have the time to care about politics, but I think you should be involved in politics because the ideologies you have now shape the political stance you have in the future.”
INFOGRAPHIC BY SUCHETA KORWAR AND BRIAN ZHAO
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