High school elections can mean the difference between a wild year of fun school events or a dismal year of low student morale. Elections at John Marshal High School have been touted as fair and democratic processes, reflecting the opinions of the student body. However, is this really the case? Are the views of the student body reflected by the voting process? New data released by the school suggests otherwise. It reveals a worrying trend that indicates only a minority of the school’s population is reflected at the polls. Many might wonder what could be done to make this process fairer and reflective of the student body.
Elections at John Marshall High School determine the makeup of a variety of groups. The Student Congress consists of students from each advisory class meeting once a month to receive updates about school processes and report back to their advisories. The School Leadership (ASB) is incredibly influential and will affect the student’s day-to-day life. ASB, the most influential student-elected body at JMHS (John Marshal High School) organizes prom dances, manages sports, and even has a vote on the Shared Decision-making Council (SDM), which votes on student disciplinary policy, professional development, bell schedules, school technology, as well as an array of other budgetary items.
The ASB elections, however, do not reflect the importance of the body. They fail to represent even half of eligible student voters, which is 1555, yet ASB only tallied 573 votes. This is clearly an issue. This trend is worryingly reflected across other student-wide elections as well; the School Site Council, which oversees school government funding, only had a voter turnout of 8.4 percent, according to Mr. Lee. Both elections have one thing in common: the method of voting. They use a system of promoting the elections over the morning announcements, and they require the student to take the initiative to cast their vote. The third and least important election, the student congress election, seems to have the most robust voting system in place, which guarantees every student can cast a vote. However, due to the lack of real power, according to student congress member Elliot Harvey, “we can analyze, discuss or complain, but have no tools to execute any intention into actual change”, this negates the
Doctor Gary Garcia even claimed that these elections “could be more democratic” and the voter turnout agrees, less than half of the school, 36 percent, voted. These numbers fall incredibly short of the national voter turnout, which in the 2020 presidential election was 67%. The undemocratic state of the school elections creates an environment for school elections to be dominated by candidates who can incentivize the nonvoting populous to vote using less-than-fair practices. For example, in last year’s ASB election, candidates promoted their campaign by bringing cookies and pizza to school during the voting period. One person brought pizza to school and subsequently won. One could make the point that the only solution required would be to allow for debates to happen, opening the stage for candidates to show their uniqueness.
This, however, would leave those still suffering from the same issues as the old elections, where voting forms can be difficult to read. According to ASB, a total of 155 votes from last year’s ASB election were submitted incorrectly, and thus unfortunately left uncounted. An obvious solution to the problem would be to create polling stations throughout the campus, allowing students to place their votes easily and conveniently, while also promoting the election and drawing the public attention. This, however, falls into the same trap as the current method for election. The assumption is that those who have not voted yet did so because of an inaccessibility to the ballot. However, surveys show that students simply do not have the initiative or the care to find the form online or wait in line to vote at a polling station. This is due to a lack of understanding about the importance of the school elections.
This is backed by student testimonials, according to student voter Ian Jennings, “In reality, I have no idea what they actually do.”
A foolproof solution to getting voting numbers up would be to allocate time during the advisory class for the advisory teachers to administer an election. This would create a space for students to get used to the democratic process in a controlled environment. This would also give the opportunities for students to become educated about the functions of their school-elected bodies.
All in all, current school elections are an insult to the democratic process and allow student voters to be ignorant of their school policies and candidates to win by bribing the student body rather than convincing them. Simple changes like the ones highlighted above would drastically improve the school and restore the school to a sanctuary for democracy.
