Editor’s Note: This piece is one-half of a duo debating whether Student Government election polls should be made public. The sister-article which argues in opposition can be found here.

Student Government election vote totals should not be released. This is the Student Government of Francis Parker, not the United States Government. Students should not need to see voting totals in order to trust the democratic process of Parker’s Student Government.

Votes are counted by the two student government faculty advisors and a handful of graduating seniors, and the results are thoroughly checked before release. Releasing voting totals would create a more transparent voting system but might also make those that won feel proud by seeing the numbers.

The primary issue with releasing voting totals is that feelings could be hurt. Although this may not seem like a concrete argument, just imagine finding out that a race lost by a significant number of votes. That would crush certain students and embarrass others.

During the past student government election, a poll of nearly a quarter of voters was taken. The results were sent around, and released to the high school.

I ran for President last spring, and the polls showed me trailing significantly in the Presidential race. The sharing of the polls with the entire school made me very upset.

After spending lots of time and energy campaigning, I didn’t need to know what an unofficial poll showed. I most definitely did not want to know what the final results of the official voting was either.

Senior Chad White, the Director of Committee Affairs (DCA), said, “There isn’t anything to gain with finding out the full results of the election.”

In additional conversations that with candidates from the previous elections, there is a split amongst those who agree about not releasing voting totals, and there were a handful of candidates that said it would be interesting to see voting results.

The second issue with releasing voting totals is the need to recount votes. It is likely that every year there is a race or two where the winner is decided by a handful of votes. If the numbers in a race are close, students involved in the race will probably want a recount of the votes to ensure their accuracy, which becomes a burden for the faculty advisors and vote counters.

There is no benefit to releasing vote totals. There is no point. There is no advantage for the winners to know if they won by five votes or 50. There are serious issues with the losing parties finding out how much they lost by, especially if they lost by a substantial number of votes. Parker should keep doing what they have been doing and only release results, not totals.