A freshly 18-year-old senior walks into MCHS, ready for the day ahead. However, many of her classmates are debating who they should vote for in this upcoming Presidential Election. Right then and there she realized that she now has the option to vote. Not sure of what to do, she visits Stacy Rottweiler’s room to learn more.
Stacy Rockweiler, English teacher at MCHS, finds importance in teaching students, especially teaching brand new voters the power of their voice and what it truly means to cast a vote. Rockweiler has run the voting drive for years and is a deputy register for the county, meaning she can register students to vote at MCHS if the student chooses to do so.
“Every year I do voting drives, obviously this year with the Presidential Election coming, we tried to do it early,” says Rockweiler. “The problem with that is that not a lot of seniors are 18 before November. It was a very small group. But I usually do it in the spring when more of our seniors have turned 18 and we try to get them to register to vote. Students can also just come by my room and I can help them register to vote online, or I’ve literally done it in class so I’m just kind of the point person at school to help kids register to vote.”
Despite the efforts of the school, as a whole politics can be scary especially for new voters.
“It’s something I’ve ever done before,” says senior Trinity Timmons. “There’s just a lot I don’t really know about. You don’t know all the candidates, you don’t know all the information, it’s just a lot being thrown at you once”
Timmons expresses her worries for voting. The influence of other people’s opinions can be extremely contradicting when voting according to Timmons, as the bias can get in the way of the true qualities you want out of a candidate especially for students who are brand new to voting.
“I think the media sways people’s opinion so much,” says Timmons. “Nobody knows what they’re getting into, and I think we need to bring that up more to people so that they know what they’re doing…having experience can be more comforting when voting.”
Politics can be overwhelming specifically with all the negativity involved, despite the intimidating nature of politics, according to Rockweiler, you need to ask yourself if you want a say in your future.
“At a young age, you’re just trying to get an understanding of what’s going on in the world,” says Rockweiler. “It can be overwhelming and we’ve seen a lot of negativity in politics as well. But …you might not be interested in politics, but politics is always going to be interested in you. Why are you going to let others pick your future? That’s why we need to vote. So that we can have a voice in what happens in our world.”
“When choosing a candidate, perfection is often not achieved,” Rockweiler wanted to make it a point for new voters to vote for who most aligns with their personal values. “… sometimes I get frustrated because people are looking for the perfect candidate, and nobody’s perfect. So we just try to find the candidate that most aligns with our values, so that we can project a world that we want…we need more young people voting so we can get their vision of the future.”
The right to vote has been fought for for centuries with women only having the right to vote for the past century. A brand new Empower Club and other organizations within the school that promote voting to honor the ability that Americans have previously fought for.
“The Empower Club is trying to gain membership and it is making voting, registering to vote a key component of the club,” says Rockweiler. “So it’s a new club that we’re starting to try to push for voting rights as women have only had the right to vote for 100 years.”
The decision to vote is difficult, but is encouraged. Rockweiler reminds the power a person’s vote has. What you want to see in this country can be achieved, individual votes can be casted at any point, so even if on the morning of election day you decide to vote that is possible. Many locations, even MCHS Upper Campus, allow voting.
“You can vote anytime you want at any location,” concludes Rockweiler. “You can wake up on Nov 5 and say ‘I want to be a voter’. You can go and register on the same day and cast your ballot. We make it so easy to register to vote. You can vote by mail, you can vote early, you can vote on election day. And that’s how it should be, making it so we even have election day as a holiday.”