Students at Revere High School (RHS) are striving to make an impact in their community by encouraging students and community members to vote and become involved in the upcoming election.
With the upcoming presidential election in November, some RHS students have found other ways to become involved in the voting process as they are not able to vote yet. RHS club Students Demand Action (SDA) and Junior Sophie Gehring have worked on multiple projects to get more high schoolers involved.
SDA members have one project they do each year to encourage high school seniors to register to vote. The club picks one morning in March for seniors and any other students who will be eighteen by the upcoming election to bring proof of voter registration. The club then provides the registered students with a donut. President of SDA Saumya Mahajan went into more detail about the project.
“We do it around March. . . . A little bit later in the year because . . . we register to be in the election that would be in the subsequent November because by that time most of the seniors in the school will be eighteen, so they will be old enough to vote. So then the donut is just an incentive to vote because the amount of voter participation and civic participation from young people is really really low,” Mahajan said.
This year, however, the club has decided to come up with a second way to get students registered. SDA social media manager Kavana Lokesh explained what the club did.
”We were at a football game trying to get people to register. . . . We had a QR code and people could scan it and register there,” Lokesh said.
Mahajan explained why the club decided to also do work in September to register people.
”The reason this year we decided to do another voter drive a little bit earlier was just because of the presidential election. So, obviously that’s not a more important election but a much wider scale, and it has more impact than some of the local elections that we have. So we wanted to get as many seniors and people in the community [registered],” Mahajan said.
Mahajan explained that since most of RHS’s seniors are not eighteen yet, the clubs focus for this voter drive was more community based.
“So we were able to get a couple seniors that were available, but then by setting up at the football game we got to interact with more people in the community. We’ve [also] put up posters at the library. . . . So [we’re] just in the community trying to make sure everyone knows it is super easy to vote [and] it doesn’t take long at all because it’s just so important to get involved,” Mahajan said.
Junior Sophie Gehring has also taken civic action in her community. She explained why she has taken an interest in the upcoming election.
“For my gold award for girl scouts, pretty much it’s like a project where I have to make an impact in my community. So mine was civic duty based because I want to become an attorney when I grow up,” Gehring said.
For one part of Gehring’s project, she created a website through the RHS website. On the page, users have access to links that will show them how to register, who can register, information on in-person and early voting, upcoming elections and volunteer opportunities.
Gehring explained that for another portion of her project she had the idea for a new bill.
“I connected with Bill Roemer, our House of Representatives representative and I talked to him about adding a bill to Ohio that would allow sixteen year olds to pre-register to vote. And we’re in the process of figuring out what contradictions it would make in the Ohio laws and what not,” Gehring said.
The last portion of Gehring’s project was an opportunity for senior RHS students to work the polls. In early October, seniors received an email from her noting that they would be given November 5 off of school if they were to work the polls. Students would also receive volunteer hours for their help.
All three students noted how important it is for young people to vote in the upcoming presidential election.
“We’ve seen that a lot of young people feel like they don’t see themselves represented in government, and that makes them less eager to vote. So it’s kind of just a vicious cycle of when you’re not voting obviously people in the government aren’t going to cater to you because you’re not their target population. So by getting people to register to vote hopefully we can end that cycle and start seeing changes in the government,” Mahajan said.
Mahajan also noted how it can be helpful to get involved in the voting process even before students turn eighteen.
”Practicing civic engagement early on, it can help you get involved in the community and then have that motivation to vote even later. Because once you get a taste for getting involved and seeing like ‘Wow I can actually create this change and have this impact,’ then you just know that your voice does matter even though it doesn’t always seem like it,” Mahajan said.
Gehring and the SDA members reiterate the importance of voting and getting involved in the process. To learn more about it, one can go to Gehring’s website: https://sites.google.com/reverestudent.org/promotethevote/home
