School Elections

One of the things that bothers me most about my high school is how the high school government election process works.

The way it goes, if you’re part of the student government and you want to run for office, you can get permission from the head of government to be in the running. Once you’re written in as a candidate, you can put up posters or campaign amongst your fellow students (which usually involves passing out candy and asking people to vote for you.) That’s all well and good, although a lot of the posters at my school are dreadful. The thing that bothers me most is how little thought goes into it. The only people who win at my school are the more popular kids who are friends with every student in their grade. It doesn’t matter if the candidate is determined to do well in their seat of authority, or even if they care that much about the position.

All that matters is the number of votes. This isn’t a good message to be sending to the students at my school. As far as I can tell, they’ve gotten used to voting for whichever candidate they like the best, rather than which candidate is the most competent. Maybe a couple hundred mislead teenagers doesn’t seem that important, but I’m somewhat worried about them, considering they’re going to be able to vote in a few years. Most kids support whoever their parents support.

They don’t even know their platform, but they’ll just follow along like a herd of sheep. Combine that with a tendency to vote for whomever you know better or whoever has a nicer poster, and you have a recipe for potential disaster. Does that sound like a good voting process to you?