Free and fair elections, the American way. But how free is free, and how fair is fair? Does everyone need to vote for an election to be fair or would that compromise a citizen’s freedom not to vote. Currently, the consensus seems to be that you don’t have to vote to be an American and sadly that notion is widely accepted as fact. Instead of having a swell of pride by completing your moral obligation at the poll booth, people give up on the system and complain their vote doesn’t matter. Could that really be the case? So far over 200 million Americans are registered to vote, yet 51 million Americans are eligible but not registered. During the midterm around only 100 million Americans voted. It seems to be that the only way to have a fair election is if everyone eligible to vote voted. If the majority of the country leans one way, then that is the way the country leans and no one can complain about that. However, that assumes all elections are free and fair. 

Our founding fathers debated at great length how our representative democracy would be set up. Perhaps their greatest accomplishment took place during the Constitutional Convention in 1787, the Great Compromise. The Great Compromise laid the groundwork to enable separation of powers and maintaining a balance of states’ rights. The smaller states were given greater say in the senate by having an equal say to states with much larger populations, and larger states were given larger say in the House of Representatives. This provides a great balance because perfect equality doesn’t exist in a territory with now over 300 million people. It is impossible to expect a perfect system and this compromise created a stable and arguably fair system. 

The Great Compromise may have been fair, yet it could still be improved. Firstly, there should be no existence of territories with large populations and no representatives. The District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and Guam all deserve equal representation regardless of statehood. If we continue to exclude these areas from the house, situations like Puerto Rico’s lack of national funding will continue to arise. Their livelihoods are more directly affected by our government arguably than anywhere else on the planet. They are Americans yet are still seen as outsiders and decisions are made on their behalf without any regards to their opinions or wellbeing. Another key improvement goes along with another key issue involving voter equality. Like gerrymandering, I believe there is a mathematical solution to minimize voter inequality. There is no reason to require 435 members of the House of Representatives. I believe that districts should be redrawn by a third party according to proportionally equal types of voters. For example, instead of three blue districts and 1 red district in an area where there are around equal numbers of democrats or even more republicans, there should be around an equal number of voters on each side that represents an area. After gerrymandering is fixed, representatives should be assigned per state according to nationwide statistics of the least number of representatives possible while maintaining the least standard deviation from the amount of people represented by one representative in one district to another. 

Megan is the oldest of three from Cincinnati and has a Catholic upbringing and went to a very competitive all-girls Catholic high school. One of the reasons why she chose Ohio state was because she didn’t want to go to an institution that was very similar to her high school. She also didn’t want to go to a school that was too close to home but she also looked at mainly Ohio schools such as the University of Cincinnati, Miami of Ohio and the University of Kentucky. Another reason why she chose to go to Ohio State was the seemingly endless opportunities available both academic and extracurricular. 

Megan was a political science major but felt that the classes discussed a lot of issues but never came to a constructive conclusion. She is still very interested in politics and participated a lot last year in the PSL meetings but decided to pursue a major in international business with a possible focus on accounting. She seems like a very intelligent individual that is taking classes in accounting, statistics, macroeconomics, and her music and literature general education requirements. She said calculus was really hard which is why I’m glad I will never have to take it because I’m in bachelors of arts. She’s also very interested in law school and is thinking about doing business law. She’s doing everything she can to make sure that she’s competitive and is trying to rush business frats. She got into one last year but didn’t think it was the right fit so she rushed again this year. In addition, to all of her academic participation, she wants to join the boo Radley happiness club where you do random acts of kindness for people. 

Throughout the interview, Megan was very helpful in quelling my doubts and giving me advice. She said she didn’t want to join the honors college because she wants to have time to get involved. That was something that I was considering but after talking to her, I no longer really felt it necessary because I could take the same classes, not have to do an extra paper, and have a lot more time to do the activities I enjoy. I really enjoyed talking to Megan and now I know that I can count on her to provide valuable advice in the future.