By Tommy Kelleher
Staff Writer
Despite their monarchical denotations, the titles of Homecoming “king” and “queen” are determined by democratic elections among the Mira Costa student body. Recently, Associated Student Body had to hold reelections for the Homecoming court due to an inconsistency of the original Homecoming court election protocol.
During the ASB’s Homecoming court election on Sept. 30, homeroom teachers were supposed to pass out ballots to juniors and seniors, so they could vote on the six boys and six girls who they believed should make the court, but this year, eight homeroom teachers did not give out ballots. Additionally, ASB left out two students’ names from the Homecoming ballot. To correct this problem, Vice Principal Jon Shaw decided that ASB would hold a reelection that took place before school, during nutrition and during lunch on Oct. 2.
The reelection system that the administration enforced inconvenienced students and compromised the accuracy of the election, as it reduced the amount of student input and involvement when it comes to voting.
Elections and reelections should be held using the same process, whether that means a homeroom election where teachers are incentasized or forced to hand out ballots, or the elections should just be held during nutrition and lunch.
ASB advisor Lisa Claypoole has supported holding reelections during homeroom, as they were held until Costa Principal Dr. Ben Dale reformed the process of its current reelection system to ensure that teachers are not disturbed with ballots twice.
According to Claypoole, the only problem with this reelection process is that there currently is not any method by which teachers are required to hand out ballots, so ultimately teachers could just ignore ballots indefinitely, even if they are given the same ballots and told to hand them out during a reelection. Therefore, an incentive or enforcement measure is needed if the school is to continue using the previous homeroom election.
Another alternative to handing out ballots in homeroom is holding elections at nutrition and lunch to begin with. In previous cases, this election process has narrowed the student-electorate to those students who care enough about voting to attend elections during nutrition and lunch. However, for an election like Homecoming, in which most students are interested and would want to cast votes, a homeroom election would be more ideal.
In this case, holding original elections at nutrition and lunch might seem like a fallback plan, but this is a plan that ASB must follow since the original elections system has proved disfunctional. Therefore, as supported by vice principals Shaw and Deborah Hofreiter, unless ASB is able to find a method by which teachers can be held accountable to hold elections during extra homeroom minutes, a consistent election process during nutrition and lunch should be implemented to ensure that the process is fair, so every student has an equal chance to vote.
Though having an easy way for students to elect Homecoming candidates is ideal, it is simply unrealistic unless teachers agree to hand out ballots. Holding elections during homeroom, scrapping them and then holding reelections during various times in the school day, however, is a pointless waste of time.
Leave a Reply