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School elections are the staple of any school. From the events the Associated Student Body (ASB) puts on, to meetings that make schools function, ASB is essential for any school’s success. ASB is chosen via two separate methods. The first one is an appointed position, and the second one is an elected position.
Appointed positions are when someone takes an interview, typically in a room with advisors and other members of ASB, and based on their performance in the interview, they are either given a slot on ASB or are told to try again at a later date.
This process, while fair in theory, leads to many complications. For example, if one has a lot of friends on the decision-making board, that board’s decision could be biased, and choose their friend over other, more qualified candidates.
Elections can also have a similar stigma. They are typically done as a full school activity, where students vote on their representatives. This type of democracy, called a direct democracy, has some pitfalls. Examples of such pitfalls include disinterest among the public and random voting. These are among the reasons the United States uses a majority-representative government system.
In this system, delegates are elected and appointed by teachers, staff members and other students, and those students who volunteer to vote go to an election, like the UHS Election Convention, for one day. With this system, key issues such as disinterest among the public, and voting randomly to be done with it are done, instead being replaced by interested people becoming delegates, listening to candidate speeches and allowing for the best delegate to be chosen.
I have personally attended the Election Convention three times. As someone who has experienced both Election Convention, and has gone through the traditional voting process of voting for class council, I have concluded that Election Convention is unquestionably the better and more fair system.
Not only does this system allow students to get to know their candidates, but it also allows for team bonding exercises, such as group games between rounds of voting and a greater sense of qualification required within a future elected seven-member. The elected seven are the main seven positions of ASB (President, Vice President, Spirit and Rally Commissioner, Boys’ Sports Commissioner, Girls’ Sports Commissioner, Student Activities Coordinator and Clubs Commissioner).
These positions are typically rotated every year, and although there have been isolated cases where a person has run for the same position year after year, those cases are few and far between. According to ThoughtCo, representative democracies are better and more efficient than direct democracies because not only is it a more streamlined process (if the Senate with 100 people is bad, imagine it with millions of people), but it’s empowering. Every city, county and state gets representation in Congress, and voters get to choose who to represent them. This representative is subject to change, so if something happens and the people no longer want someone to represent them, that person can be changed in the next election. In addition, it means that people with experience in the field are going in and making decisions, and those people are more qualified than the average person to make certain decisions. This process also encourages participation, as voters have to vote on a yearly scale, as compared to a daily scale. As there is significantly less voting required, there is a higher chance people will show up and vote for the people that they want to win. In addition, Marvin County alone spends roughly one million dollars per election cycle. If this trend were to continue with all of the United States elections, those costs would add up to a significant scale. This is fine if it is on an annual basis, as it is just the cost of running a government, but it is not feasible to be replicated on a small scale.
Bringing it back to a schoolwide scale, it has been made apparent that representative elections, such as the Election Convention, benefit the school, the students, the staff and the overall school for years to come. The Election Convention is an amazing opportunity to learn new skills, gain experience and overall have fun, and it should conclusively be something that every school implements in some way, shape or form.
