Facing the Vote

America will choose between very different futures tomorrow.  What questions remain for Nueva and its voting-age population?

By Jackson H. and Gabriel B.

Nueva’s first presidential election had been an upset. Donald Trump’s win in 2016 was without precedent in recent history, a political outsider overcoming a massive polling deficit on a platform far outside of orthodoxy.

Located in the solidly Democratic Bay Area, the consensus view on campus had been that Hillary Clinton was a president-in-waiting.

“People were looking at Nate Silver’s model and were shocked at Trump having even a one-in-three chance,” said Upper School Math teacher Liam McDonald ’19, who was then a sophomore. “I think that election really broke students’ sense of certainty about politics.”

The day after Trump’s election, many students returned to campus still shocked by the surprise outcome the night before. The business-as-usual plan for that day had been disrupted.

“We got very little done,” McDonald recalled. “In a lot of my classes, we just talked about the election.”

Eight years later, the country has been through two tumultuous presidencies, increasing polarization, the overturning of century-old legal and political precedents, all without mentioning a global pandemic and American involvement in new wars in Europe and the Middle East.

The 2024 race gives America a choice between starkly different candidates. But closer to home, school administration and of-age voters in the senior class will have to make difficult decisions on how to engage with what promises to be a highly contentious election.

I. Senior Voters

19 seniors in the Class of 2025 are eligible to vote in the Nov. 5 general election. Among them, there is a palpable awareness of this election’s prominence as a historical event. 

“I’m excited because it’s my first time voting, but also because this is an election that a lot of people have been anticipating. People are calling it one of the most important elections of our history,” said Margot Salles ’25, who turned 18 in September.

Carly Bodnick ’25, who plans to vote for Harris, values the opportunity to uphold the principles behind voting and voice what she stands for regardless of her influence over the result.

“I’m very excited to get to vote for a woman for my first time voting,” Bodnick said. “My family and I are very pro-voting. Even if we’re in California and everything is probably going to go Democrat, I think it’s an important part of being active in our community.”

In 2020, President Joe Biden earned a 5 million vote margin over Trump in California. The assumption of a similar landslide win for Harris in the state can lead to the conclusion that, under the Electoral College system, individual Bay Area voters possess virtually no power over the presidential contest. 

A lack of influence on the result is indeed a source of apathy for some of the seniors who are headed to the ballot box.

“California is going blue [Democratic], so I don’t really care about voting for president,” said San Francisco voter Jackson Lee ’25.

Swain Mathewson ’25 will complete his ballot too, but echoed Lee’s view.

“Voting in the presidential election doesn’t really do anything in the Bay Area,” he said.

In the eyes of a number of senior voters, local elections and propositions offer more voting power and personal impact than the presidential contest.

“A local election has much more bearing on your life than the federal elections,” Daniel Risk ’25 said. “Being able to vote on ballot measures in the state feels a lot more hopeful, and better than just voting for someone for federal office.”

Leo Stoll ’25 followed a similar logic in his voting approach.

“I was focusing a lot on the propositions specifically in California because I think that will have the biggest effect on me directly,” he said.

While unmoved by the presidential campaigns, Lee is closely attuned to the San Francisco ballot measures, California propositions, and San Francisco’s races for mayor and district supervisor. He planned to vote yes on state propositions to fund education (Prop. 2) and healthcare (Prop. 35), but wanted to be more informed about rent control (Prop. 33) before coming to a decision.

Greater interest in local elections and a corresponding desire to vote informed runs into the challenge of researching and parsing through information on lesser-known candidates and ballot initiatives. The voter guide mailed with the ballot does supply candidate statements as well as pro, con, and rebuttal arguments for state and local propositions.

“When you get into the nitty gritty—on my ballot, there was stuff for Santa Clara county—I was like: Whoa, I don’t know anything about this,” Salles said.

For the San Francisco mayoral election, Mathewson said if he remained undecided he would likely abstain from filling out his selection, while still voting on propositions. He lists inequality, housing discrimination, transit, and substance abuse as the most important local issues to him.

“I don’t know enough about the candidates’ preferences from what they say their policies are and what they actually are,” Mathewson said.

Lee seeks out information from his parents and other adults, but also receives unsolicited opinions when “spammed” with campaign advertisements. He does research to quality control the messages circulating around him.

“It’s really about me trying to figure out which opinions I really want to take into account and which ones I don’t, because there’s so much,” Lee said. “People are just willing to do whatever they can to make it known what they believe about a certain proposition or candidate.”

Although a vote for president or even local office may not hold much sway, senior voters are still invested in the outcomes, both in terms of the winning candidate and the process of the election itself.

Bodnick anxiously senses that “saving democracy” is at stake in the presidential election, and it is a cause she lays behind her vote for Harris.

Mathewson shares the worry over the health of American politics and how the election will reflect upon it.

“I’m concerned about people, once again, claiming that the election lacked integrity,” he said. “I’m concerned that people are going to be spreading more demagoguery and fear tactics surrounding our democracy.”

The student voters do not want a replay of the 2020 election aftermath to Trump’s defeat. Stoll and others alluded to unfounded denials of Biden’s victory in 2020, and the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021 to attempt to stop the certification of the results. 

As for election day itself, the ideal is a smooth and peaceful operation.

“Other than the outcome, making sure that voting is safe—here I think it’ll probably be pretty safe, but in other places in the country just from what’s happened in the past,” Stoll said.

In that vein, Risk considers the “rule of law” a high priority for the election. In general, he wishes there was an alternative to vitriolic, heated culture enveloping the presidential race.

“A lot of people are saying very hateful things on both sides,” Risk commented. “I wish there was a little bit more civility.”

An “all-or-nothing” election climate is at once bothersome to Risk and indicative of the divide between Trump and Harris over key issues on the table, such as individual rights and freedoms, border control, healthcare, and foreign policy.

“A local election has much more bearing on your life than the federal elections,” Daniel Risk ’25 said.

While the value they place on their own votes may vary between the national and regional context, the senior voters each have visions and concerns for the election outcomes and process that motivate them to get out to the polls.

Per the Census Bureau, 18 to 24-year-olds recorded the lowest voter turnout of any age group in 2020, at 51% nationally compared to 67% overall. For all their different attitudes toward voting, the 19 seniors’ participation as first-time eligible voters exceeds the national norm.  

II. State of the Race

On Nov. 5, over 240 million Americans will be eligible to vote in what polling indicates will be the closest election since at least 2000. 

A victory for either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris would be history-making. Harris would be the first woman and woman of color to hold the office. Trump would be the second president ever to serve non-consecutive terms—the first being Grover Cleveland in 1892—and the only convicted felon ever to become president. 

Harris, since taking the reins from President Biden in July, has turned the race on its head. Biden’s underwater polling had given Trump a sizable lead, but Harris’ fast-moving campaign brought in $1 billion in three months and generated enthusiasm among disaffected Democratic voting blocs, such as young voters and people of color. 

Throughout October, however, Harris’ already tight polling lead has narrowed further to a dead heat, with the race within two points in all seven major battleground states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. 

Election night watchers may focus in particular on Pennsylvania, the largest and closest of the battleground states. Whichever candidate wins there will likely be the next President.

A key question on election night will be the extent of polling error. Trump has historically been underestimated by polls in both 2016 and 2020. A similar error this year would likely yield a decisive victory for the Republicans.

But in the eyes of most forecasters, the race is essentially fifty-fifty. Very few political experts claim to know the result, though betting markets and poll aggregators started showing a Trump advantage in October for the first time since Harris won the Democratic nomination.

No matter the winner, it remains an open question of how long it will take for the results to be known.

Since the pandemic, more voters have been voting early or by mail and counting has begun to stretch across multiple days. It took four days for Biden’s win to be confirmed in 2020.

And if Harris were to win, the battle could be further drawn out by litigation from Trump’s campaign. After refusing to acknowledge his loss for the past four years, Republicans are already prepared to contest this year. “Another January 6th” has been a frequent fear for commentators as well as senior voters.

III. Finding a “Nueva Way” for 2024

Nueva is no stranger to dealing with major geopolitical events. But a highly unpredictable contest, often described as the most important in recent history, is a very different beast. 

Furthermore, preparing for “the day after” is made more complex by the high likelihood a winner will not be known on election night.

An assembly on Nov. 6 will consist of an audio presentation on “What Democracy Means to Me” made by Director of Equity and Inclusion Shawn Taylor and breakout “What Now?” mini-WoW sessions investigating specific questions in the aftermath of the election.

“I’m optimistic that the school is tackling this head on and that we’re going to acknowledge the moment,” said history teacher Chelsea Denlow. “We’re all going to be in a space of the unknown and uncomfortable together.”

“We’re going to acknowledge the moment,” said history teacher Chelsea Denlow. “We’re all going to be in a space of the unknown and uncomfortable together.”

Aside from the special programming, Wednesday will be a typical school day, and teachers may or may not choose to incorporate the previous night’s returns.

“I would expect a history class that day to discuss the election, but a physics class would do physics,” Upper School Division Head Liza Raynal said. “But we’re not trying to put a bubble around us and pretend the election doesn’t exist, and teachers will lean into their expertise.”

Denlow’s American History class, as one example, has kept an open discussion forum on Canvas this semester for asking and answering questions about the election. 

Across the 11th grade history classes, a new project on the Constitution’s relevance to modern issues has also been created to coincide with the final weeks of election season.

Similarly, in debate coach Les Phillips’ American Government elective, students are writing election prediction papers, determining who will win a given swing state by drawing from polls, the state’s voting history, and other factors.

Denlow and the History department have additionally taken the lead on two iterations of Civics WoWs (Wednesdays of Wonder) on Oct. 2 and Oct. 23 respectively.

The WoWs included purely political sessions on campaign finance or American populism, but there were also interdisciplinary offerings connecting the election to poetry, statistics, or climate change.

“We decided rather than have the whole school sit through an assembly to talk about the election, that we’d do something very Nueva: to have faculty lean on their expertise and get at civic education from many different angles,” Denlow said. 

The workshops held value for senior voters such as Salles, both as a student and a voter.

“Especially the ones with [civic] themes are getting us into that voting mindset. I think it’s good that they’re non-partisan because it’s allowing us to get our own opinions.”

While the Civics WoWs are a new creation, election programming such as “What Now” sessions has existed in past cycles at the Upper School, both online in 2020 and in-person after the 2022 midterms.

While the school is borrowing from past cycles, Raynal believes that the way Nueva is handling this election season is more informed by the present cultural mood than the past.

“This moment is informing us more than those elections are,” Raynal said. “We are in the most polarized world that I can remember, and you all have grown up as thinkers without a remembered experience of a different version of politics.”

Countering the polarized attitudes that are driving the 2024 election is part of Nueva’s broader theme this year of civil discourse. 

“Our hope is to provide you with avenues to figure out what you believe and ways in which to express beliefs while listening across differences,” Raynal said. “So while we are thinking about civil discourse because of the election, we’re also thinking about it for larger reasons of preparing students to be in the world.”

In describing her vision for civil discourse, Raynal often refers to the E.E. Ford Foundation’s framework for schools encouraging ideological pluralism.

The framework’s second core pillar, “Disciplined Nonpartisanship,” encourages schools to refrain from directly participating in partisan activity. 

That commitment is further mandated by Nueva’s position as a 501(c)(3) non-profit, meaning it is prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in any political campaign on behalf of any candidate for elected office.

However, neutral civic engagement initiatives have been permitted and platformed on campus. Students have led voter pre-registration drives, wrote over 1000 get-out-the-vote postcards, and may be excused from attendance on Election Day in order to volunteer as poll workers.

“It’s not because I want every person to become a poll worker, but I do want them to know that we care about the ways in which they engage in their communities,” Raynal said.

That community engagement has stretched off-campus as well. Numerous students have volunteered on local campaigns, such as the heated battle between Sam Liccardo and Evan Low for the 16th congressional district, or on the presidential race through phone banking or postcarding.

Students and faculty are all engaged in different capacities, but the community as a whole has Election Day circled on the calendar. 

When the calls are announced on election night, it will open up a barrage of material for discussion and reflection. The way the community handles the result will be hard to control, but will serve as an opportunity for testing the school’s vision for civil discourse.