Every election season growing up, Maya Kodali and her sister accompanied their mom to the polls.
Their mom brought the girls along because it was her duty, she felt, to make voting a routine part of their lives.
“She’d tell us that not voting, whether out of laziness or lack of education, is the biggest threat to our democracy because without everyone participating, the government doesn't truly represent the people,” says Maya, a junior at Providence Day, “it’s taking for granted what people have literally sacrificed everything for.”
Although she’s still not old enough to vote in the upcoming election — early voting in North Carolina began October 17 and runs through November 2, and the General Election is November 5 — she continues to make election season a part of her life.
Maya and a group of classmates from Providence Day’s Advanced Placement (AP) Government and Politics class are exit polling every Saturday at sites across the city leading up to Election Day.
Since 2018, students enrolled in Dr. Jennifer Bratyanski’s AP class have conducted exit polls during each election season. She says, “Through this experience, our students gain a deeper understanding of the democratic systems they study in class. Students engaging with voters firsthand reveals the complexity of voter motivations and highlights the importance of data collection in gauging public sentiment.”
Young people, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, or CIRCLE, benefit from civic instruction and encouragement in high school.
Dr. Bratyanski adds, “Conducting these exit polls ideally empowers students by allowing them to participate actively in the electoral process and observe how diverse social, economic, and political factors influence voter decisions throughout Charlotte. Additionally, the experience sharpens their analytical skills as they interpret poll data and observe patterns in real time. This experiential learning activity is designed to promote a sense of civic responsibility and to inspire students toward informed voting habits in the future.”
The CIRCLE 2020 poll parallels what the AP Government class finds year after year. It shows that, “Young people who learned about voting procedures in high school are more prepared for voting today: they were more likely than their peers to know if their states had online voter registration, and at least 10 percentage points more likely to respond that they had seen information on how to vote by mail, and to state that they would know where to go to find information on voting if their state’s election was shifted to all mail-in ballots.”
Getting engaged in politics
Maya and a classmate stood by the exit of the Marion Diehl Recreation Center and Pool voting site last Saturday.
As voters exited, the Providence Day students gave them a short introduction as to who they were and then asked them to fill out a form. The mostly senior population of voters were happy and willing to fill out the form.
“At one point, we had a short line of people who were waiting to fill out our form,” Maya says. “Many were super happy and excited that high school students were getting involved because they were concerned about how few young people vote nowadays. Even some of the people who originally swatted us away changed their minds when we said we were high school students.”
Both Maya and senior Rebecca James believe it’s useful for students to get involved in the election process because the results have an impact on lives.
“It’s good for students to be involved even if they are not old enough to vote because the policies and laws that are impacted by this election affect us all,” Rebecca, who also worked at a polling place last Saturday, says.
She continues: “It is super important for young people to learn about these issues and the way the system works because so many young people are not engaged in politics or get all their information from social media and don’t realize the importance of their vote.”
Easy to vote
More than one million eligible voters in North Carolina voted for the 2024 general election after the first four days of early voting, according to the state board of elections.
“The general feeling I got from people as they left the polling site was that they had a duty voting in this election and that people felt very strongly that this election was going to make a huge difference in the future of this country,” Rebecca says.
Research studies show that young people’s access to civic learning in school shapes their future voting habits and lifelong civic engagement, according to CIRCLE.
“Understanding the process now means that when the time comes that you can vote, you'll be that much more educated about the process,” Maya says. “Being at the site showed me how easy it actually is to vote.”