Kalin Norman
Photography Editor
It’s election season once again, and all everyone for at least the next two weeks are, “Go out and vote”, “Every vote counts”, “People died so
you can have this right”, and other sayings along those lines. These sayings and people are not wrong at all, it is important to vote. However, when it comes to voting for me, it has become less about the act and more about the process. While we all know people will come out in droves (especially after the 2016 presidential election) to show support for their parties senators, congressman, and presidential candidate. However, when it comes down to the smaller more local positions,
voters have more of an attitude of not caring. To quote Andre 3000, “Y’all telling me that I need to get out and vote, huh, why? Ain’t nobody black running but crac-kers, so, why. I got to register?” This is the fi rst problem with voting, voter interest. According to U.S. News, Jackson State has roughly 5,331 students enrolled with a healthy amount, like myself,
that are from out-of-state, and one of the most frequented replies when asked about voting is; “I don’t live here, and I’m not planning to stay when I fi nish.” When it comes to short term voting, this a very dangerous way of thinking for that community that they attend. For obvious reasons, this is bad because it leads to lost votes, but it also shows that (unlike other areas) the community is broken and doesn’t want to work together to improve their current situation. Okay now let us say that everyone votes for every election. My next question for you is, when voting how do you know that the state is getting your vote right? Like the majority of the country you probably don’t know, and that brings me to my next problem of voting security. Voting security has been a big question since the 2016 presidential election with the suspected Russian tampering/medling. Even though that has been a question sitting on people’s mind for almost fi ve years now, little to nothing has been done to improve the voting machines or the security of them.
Mississippi uses paper to machine voting (fi ll out bubbles on paper then feed it to a machine that counts it), which isn’t a bad thing. It is probably the best move the state can make for voting for backup purposes, but if the state’s Internet is anything like Jackson State’s, then its residents are in trouble. Since it has been found that in many voting stations around the country being completely unattended machines that can be hacked and infected. Everything I’ve mentioned so far are preventable or fi xable, but still the biggest and oldest elephant is still in the room when comes to voting. No matter how you feel we all must admit that the Electoral College is extremely
fl awed. Due to this system of voting it turns everyone’s “votes” into suggestions, and gives the country an inaccurate refl ection of its people. This system also opens the country up to infl uences such as private businesses, government’s personal interests, and wealthy friends that in no way helps the country’s people. Plus the Electoral College is massively disportionate, giving smaller populated states more power over the other states. Voting is important and should be taken seriously, because it is a cornerstone of the American experience. However, I do believe that voting, on every level, is an extremely fl awed process and needs to be fixed.
The views expressed in the commentary are those of the writer(s) and in no way represent the views of The Blue & White Flash.
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