Small talk and laughter fill the cool air of the art wing as students sit around tables outside the ceramics room. There are piles of markers on the table, and a thick stack of postcards that say “America Votes.” Although the vibes are chill, something more serious is happening.

During tutorial and x-period on Monday, around 15 students gathered in the art wing to assist junior Echo Dayton in writing postcards encouraging Americans to vote in the upcoming election on Nov. 5. The event was advertised in the student newsletter and also promoted individually by Dayton and fellow junior Maeve Duncan by talking to peers and classmates. As such, many of the attendees were juniors, but several 9th-graders and sophomores were also present.

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Greyson Sale

WRITE, WRITE, WRITE SOME MORE. Junior Rowan Moore cranks out postcards. Although Moore mainly followed the template, they underlined important words and added doodles to their postcards. "It’s important to vote because you want to be a part of choosing who’s going to be in office, because whoever’s in office is going to impact you and your everyday life,” they said.

Dayton, the event organizer, was exceedingly interested in finding ways to participate in the voting process of the election.

“In this upcoming election, there’s a lot at stake,” she said. “I turn 17 right before the election, which is really frustrating to me because I’m not old enough to vote. I was trying to think of ways to get myself involved, so I registered to be an election judge and did some phone banking, but that didn’t really feel like I was making an impact on that many people, just helping out with the technical part of the election. So, I signed up to write 500 postcards to people in swing states.”

Dayton signed up for a postcard writing program through an organization called Postcards to Swing States. Although the organization is left-leaning, the postcard messages sent in this initiative are nonpartisan, simply encouraging voter participation in the most hotly contested swing state races, where increased voter turnout could have a major impact on voting results.

“I thought it would be good for school because everybody can get involved no matter what political party they might [identify with],” she said. “No matter what party you’re affiliated with, remember that [voting] is important and your vote counts.”

Both Dayton and Duncan were pleasantly surprised with the student turnout at the event. Dayton was especially enthused because she had to fill out whatever postcards were still left blank after the event (and there were not many). In addition to supporting their peers, all of the attendees showed up because they believe voting is important. Several were discussing their views about voting while writing postcards.

“It’s important to vote because you want to be a part of choosing who’s going to be in office because whoever’s in office is going to impact you and your everyday life,” junior Rowan Moore said.

Junior Maeve Duncan shared a similar view: “The whole point of voting is so that there are people in office that have your best interests at heart.”

Dayton emphasized the significance of singular votes.

“I feel like a lot of people think that ‘it doesn’t matter if I vote because I’m just one person,’ but one vote sometimes is the difference. If you are strongly passionate about things that are on the ballot like healthcare and wages and all these things that are being voted on in this election and in every election, it’s important to go and express that [by voting]. It only takes a couple minutes.”

For students under 18, however, there are many other ways to get involved. Options range from working as an election judge to talking to adults about the importance of voting or keeping an eye out for school opportunities like this one. The second part of the event, more postcard writing, took place during Thursday’s tutorial and saw a similar turnout.