Jarrod Ragsdale Staff writer

With election season just around the corner, everyone is anxious about what’s happening. Currently, all the talk is focused on the two very aggressive and opposing candidates in the polls and what’s to come which leaves many new voters like our current seniors very confused on how to actually register to vote and why voting is such a big deal.

“A lot of people don’t think their votes count because of the Electoral College,” senior Brandon Johnson said.

This makes sense, as many like him ask themselves why we should think voting matters if we don’t see our vote directly correlating to the polls. However, if everyone has this mentality, then the Electoral College will have no idea what the populace really wants. With so many of our current seniors about to enter the political scene as fresh voters with fresh ideas, it’s important to review how to register for voting. All you have to do is follow the steps listed at right:

Many seniors are either not interested in voting or don’t know how to, yet we expect them to. There are some faults to be accounted for this.

“[Students are] not interested in voting because…we don’t show them any application or significance in their lives,” AP English teacher Mr. Stephens said.

Stephens said that students don’t have the same care or interest in voting as adults do because they haven’t yet had to deal with adult responsibilities.

“We just say ‘get out there and vote’ like we have this expectation that they’ll suddenly care about things they’ve never had to care about because it’s never affected them,” Stephens said.

Students have a similar feeling towards this.

“Kids in society don’t give it much thought. And now with schools, we don’t really talk about it that much, so if you’re not exposed to it, you’re not going to want to do it,” senior Jawed Bensalah said.

Half a semester in the tail end of your high school career isn’t enough to get young adults interested in something that has hardly concerned them until then, so we need to either remedy that or stop expecting young men and women to give two hoots about voting.

Even if you were not sure how to vote, you would do well to inform yourself on both candidates and vote on whose policies you agree with most.