Miten Patel, an AP United States Government and Politics teacher at Evanston Township High School, took students to the Lorraine H. Morton Civic Center, the city’s early voting station, on Tuesday.
The trip was open to all ETHS students to allow eligible voters to cast their ballots and younger students to see the election process up close, said Patel, the adviser of ETHS Politics Club. He said no matter how old a student is, they should be aware of how important voting is and the power an individual vote can have.
“Eventually, you will be 18, and hopefully you reflect on the time you went to the Civic Center and you got to watch other people vote, and when it was your turn to vote, you actually went and did it,” he said.
Eli Coustan, a senior at ETHS, is preparing to be an election judge on Nov. 5 to help people vote in person. He was also an election judge for the March primary election this year.
Election judges help set up and manage the polls as voters come in to cast their ballots on Election Day. High school juniors and seniors who are U.S. citizens and have a GPA of at least 3.0 are eligible to become election judges.
Coustan said he wanted to be a judge after going to the polls with his parents during previous elections because he realized the importance of election judges to the in-person voting process. He added that it was a way for him to be involved with the election process despite being too young to vote.
During the March primary, he said he was “shocked” by the low turnout of voters in his precinct — he estimated only 150 out of about 1,000 in his precinct came to the polls — a pattern that was reflected in all of Cook County, which had a voter turnout rate of about 18%.
He said people believe the presidential election is the only important race, but when it comes to issues like crime, it is the state and local officials that can actually make a difference.
Coustan emphasized that the low voter turnout among those ages 18 to 24 was “frustrating” because the issues relevant to elections impact them along with everyone else.
“I recognize that it can be easy to feel disillusioned with the state of our country right now, and it can be easy to feel like you disagree with both candidates on issues,” he said. “I know that’s the thing going through the minds of many 18 to 24 year olds.”
Students’ discussions about politics have shifted focus to polarization in the last four years, according to ETHS senior Marin Ubersox, founder and co-president of Politics Club.
Ubersox said most, if not all, members of the club are left-leaning, which can cause conversations to be an “echo chamber.”
One topic that created an “even split” among the group, though, is the Israel-Hamas war, Ubersox said. She said this made it more difficult for people to have discussions on the issue and for the club’s leadership to facilitate.
She said some of her peers have debated who to vote for based on the war. Ubersox said for her, it’s about voting for the “lesser of two evils.”
She added that all of her friends who are 18 are planning to vote. She said the ETHS community as a whole is “uniquely” civically engaged because the school community encourages it.
Although most students at ETHS are too young to vote, their “sense of urgency” has increased due to the “tension” across the country, said Betsy Gutstein, a civics teacher.
Gutstein said she felt more pressure to ensure students were equipped with every tool and resource possible to help them recognize credible information and listen to opinions they may disagree with.
She said her civics classes watched Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris speak at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which coincided with the second week of school.
Gutstein said she also assigned students to watch the presidential and vice presidential debates. Students came back with “astute” observations and didn’t shy away from calling out the candidates, she said.
“They’re coming of age at a time when the country has been very divided, continues to be divided,” she said. “They’re really concerned.”
Email: [email protected]
X: @anavi_52
Related Stories:
— ‘A way that makes sense to them’: ETHS multilingual services aim to support asylum-seeking families
— D202 board passes Fiscal Year 2025 Capital Improvement Plan, develops land acknowledgement
