Our Side: Wanting to see the light in online voting

For those seniors out there with a good memory, do you recall the golden days of yore when homecoming, Sno Court and prom royalty voting happened with good, old-fashioned paper ballots? Those days are long gone. Nowadays, we find ourselves surrounded by hip, young folks with their iPad nanos and their Android-app-market-store-what’s-it. Nowadays, voting is done over the world wide interwebs.

However, are students really accepting and excited for the new ways that voting in our school is conducted? Ever since the methods of voting changed, according to various members of student senate, the number of people voting has plummeted. In the last Homecoming election, we were faced with 42 percent of freshman voting, 27 percent of sophomores voting, 35 percent of juniors voting, 34 percent of seniors voting, and 43 percent of the whole school voting for king and queen.

Three times a year, we vote for people to represent our school. First, we elect two boys and two girls from the freshman, sophomores, and juniors to represent their grade; and three boys and three girls to represent the seniors. Second, we nominate two couples from each grade to be sno court representatives. Third, we nominate three senior couples to be our prom royalty.

Personally, I’ve never had any objections to any of the people voted into court. They’ve all been great representatives of our class. The fact remains, though, that not nearly as many people are voting for these representatives, we’re not seeing the full spectrum of students’ voices being heard.

So, I encourage those students in GLHS who find themselves feeling very lethargic about voting to go out and make your voice heard. School spirit is an amazing thing to behold. Hopefully, we’ll one day see an election with 100 percent of the student populous voting.

 

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