Voting for the general election is under two weeks away, and as it comes close, some students at the high school are getting registered to vote for their first election.
“I will be voting in this upcoming election, and I have been registered since I got my full license,” said senior Isaac Binder. “I am looking forward to participating in the election. I feel like voting gives me a say in the direction of the country in the future.”
Isaac says this isn’t his first experience with politics, but his first time going out to vote.
“I went to a presidential candidate´s rally when I was 14,¨ said Isaac. ¨I thought it was interesting, I went to the rally for the party I associated with at the time. I am thinking that I will start to get more involved after I vote and participate in that way.”
Some students chose to get involved by watching the presidential debate. Although there is not another debate scheduled, candidates will likely participate in interviews prior to the election.
“I watched both the presidential and the vice president debate and I thought it was really interesting to see what the future looks like for our country,” said Hunter Newberg, Norwalk High School senior. “I am not a huge fan of the commentators not being completely neutral. I think they need to find a way to make it more equal and not have them sided with a party.”
Hunter said that he feels the presidential election is something he enjoys about living in the United States.
“It is a very exciting time for our country,” Hunter said. ¨Being able to unify as a country and all participate is something special that not all countries have, so we need to make the most out of it.”
Mr. Alfred, a Norwalk High School government teacher, said that Iowa is a state in which registering is required to vote.
“Forty-nine of our 50 states require you to be registered to vote, so if you aren’t able to register to vote it becomes a barrier to voting. And so it’s important to have young people learn the process of registering to vote.”
There are many ways to register to vote. In Iowa, you can register through election day. Seniors at the high school are able to register during their government class.
“There’s actually a bunch of ways to register if you think about it,¨ Mr. Alfred said. ¨Most people commonly register while getting their driver’s license at the DMV. They ask if you would want to vote and they will click a button and then you are registered. It’s probably the easiest way to register in Iowa.
“The next way you can register to vote is online, although not every single state will have an online voter registration, it is nice Iowa does and it helps people get registered.”
Even if you are not able to register beforehand, you can register on election day.
“You can go directly into the polling place and show your ID with your address or something with your address, and they will allow you to cast the same exact ballot as everyone else,” said Mr. Alfred. “So if you miss the voter registration deadline of Oct. 21, you can still register to vote the same day of the election.”
Some votes are a popular vote, decided by the number of votes from citizens, while the presidential election is decided by electoral votes. In Iowa this means whichever candidate wins the popular vote, they get electoral votes equal to the number of representatives in Congress we have.
“Your one vote does matter,¨ Mr. Alfred said. “It might not matter in every single election – you know, in your presidential election your state might be decided, people know that Iowa is probably gonna go to Donald Trump because of electoral votes.¨
Alfred said there are elections where your vote does really matter.
“Our current U.S representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks in her first election where she got elected she won by six votes,¨ said Mr. Alfred. ¨And so winning by those six votes shows if you had six people that didn’t show up and they didn’t vote it could have swayed that election.”
There are many ways students can get involved with politics in Iowa from state to nationwide elections.
“I would say the first way to get involved is to look at the information out there,¨ said Mr. Alfred. ¨They hold debates and show ads, so I think just paying attention and listening to what people have to say is important. Just try and figure out the different things these two groups are trying to do, and if you like a group enough, you can volunteer for them and help them.”
Some ways to get involved include working or interning for political groups and organizations.
“Another way to get involved – and the government does a great job at this – is I don’t know a government place that doesn’t have an internship, or at least explain things to help you know more,¨ said Mr. Alfred.“You can work on election day as an election day worker, and accept ballots and get paid to do that which is a very good way to get involved.”
Mr. Alfred is the advisor of the NHS Student Council, which has a Voter Registration Action Team that tries to get 90% of all eligible students registered to vote.
“So what happens is they will go into senior level classes and try to get students to register to vote. Because we found data that says if we get them to register to vote now. Even though they may not vote in this election, they will be more familiar with the process and be more likely to vote in the future.”
So as election day is less than two weeks away, Mr. Alfred said students could use this as an opportunity to get involved in politics and start having a say in our country’s future.
¨There are plenty of opportunities out there, and young people just need to be willing to take those, and listen to those opportunities and go forward from there.”
