Tag: voting

  • ASB Voting

    Now, I know what you’re thinking, what did ASB do now? Stop your thinking and listen. I want to talk about the different voting suggestions for ASB. It’s not that we despise the way of voting, we just strongly believe that it does not give an equal opportunity for the candidate to receive their votes. One way to make the campaign have a better participation rate, is having voting ballots be distributed to every class. The current way of voting takes place during lunch, where majority of it is taken up by long lunch lines. Most students do not want to wait in another line just to vote, especially when most of the school’s population feels like they have no voice. If our solution is taken into consideration, the participation rates could rise, everyone can take time to think about their choices, and teenagers wouldn’t complain about waiting in line to vote. I understand the voting sessions mimic the same system that real-world adults take, but if you really want kids to vote, you’re going to have to make it more convenient for them. Think about this, the more participation, the more active teenagers are going to be in their schools. It only takes a little change to make a big difference.

    As stated in last month’s paper, a major issue as to why there is such a lack of diversity in ASB is because of the amount of uninformed students that attend our campus. A larger effort should be made to reach out to those students, outside of PACE and CIC, to place them on the same playing field as the more popular candidates. Many students who aren’t in PACE or CIC, feel like they have a limited voice on campus. Instead of taking offence to criticism, take this as an opportunity to broaden the horizons of ASB and make a change to the voting system. If ASB enforces a more inclusive, and less clique-oriented environment, then it will truly bring harmony across all pathways on campus.

  • America, Give Iowa a Try

    With the presidential election moving ahead, with President Barack Obama finishing his second term, and with others just itching to become the new president of the United States, the Iowa caucuses took place on February 10 for the candidates to compete for the most votes.
    In the Republican Party, Ted Cruz won with 27.6% of the vote, beating second-place candidate Donald Trump, who gained 24.3% of the vote. Hillary Clinton took first in the Democratic Party with 49.9%, 0.3% lead over second-place candidate Bernie Sanders, who took 49.6% of the vote.
    Unfortunately, there is some debate over whether the primaries for the party nominations should start in such an unrepresentative state. According to a 2014 survey by the US Census Bureau, 92.1% of the state of Iowa is white. African-Americans, Hispanics, Latinos and other racial minorities do not make up a large portion of the Iowa population. The Iowa caucuses have been criticized as “overwhelmingly white.” What makes the 2016 presidential election so interesting is that some candidates are Jewish [Bernie Sanders (D-VT)] or of African-American [Ben Carson (R)] or Cuban [Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Marco Rubio (R-FL)] descent. Some say that Americans are more open to having a Catholic, female, black, Hispanic, or Jewish president.
    The Iowa caucuses are problematic for future primaries. Because it is the first state to vote in the presidential primaries, Iowa sets the tone for the future primaries and can even sway voter decisions in other states’ primaries. Iowa contains few major cities and hardly any people of color. New Hampshire is in a similar boat as Iowa, being the second state to hold its primary. Iowa and New Hampshire have large white populations, 92.1% in Iowa and 94.2% in New Hampshire. African-Americans make up only 3.3% and Latinos 5.6% in Iowa; New Hampshire is 1.5% African-American and 5.6% Latino. The United States collectively is 77.7% white, 13.2% black, and 17.1% Latino.
    Over fifty years ago, African-Americans campaigned and fought for the right to vote; now we have that vote. However, when presidential elections start with a deeply unrepresentative primary, we need to reassess whether this is truly equal. I believe it would be much better to have the Nevada caucus spearhead the primaries because it has a more diverse population. Nevada’s population is 51.5% white, 9.2% black, and 27.8% Latino, a much more representative racial breakdown than Iowa’s. This would not be a huge change either; Nevada is the third state the hold its primary (Tuesday, February 9 for the Democratic National Party and February 23 for the GOP). All we need to do is move the caucus up three weeks and let a more diverse state set the tone for the presidential election.