Moving Election Day

Today, despite early voting and voting-by-mail in most states, in 15 states you can only vote on Tuesday during the hours the polling place is open. So if you're a single mother or father, or work two or three jobs, or have long hours in school and you can't make it to your polling place tough luck. This in a country whose voter turnout ranks 138th of 172 nations. It's hard to believe that the world's most famous democracy has one of the world's worst voter turnouts. Moving Election Day to the weekend will make it more convenient for people to vote and the voter turnout will rise dramatically in my opinion.

Whether we move Election Day to the weekend or make it a National Holiday to increase turnout, or adopt convenience voting in all 50 states, something must be done to fix our terribly broken voting system. With rules that make it more difficult to vote, from voter ID, to purging, caging, felon disenfranchisement, and tricky registration regulations, the least we can do is vote on a day or in a way that makes voting accessible.

U.S. needs to add student online privacy rules.

A blog posted by the LA Times editorial board on March 5, 2014 is intended for students in school, parents and others who are concerned about a student's privacy rights. The post was written by the LA Times editorial board whom are qualified and reliable. The argument the editorial board is trying to make is that the federal government should enforce a policy that will ban private firms from contracting with public schools to sell student records in the U.S.

The editorial board is claiming that private firms are contracting with public schools for selling students' personal data and records. According to the children's advocacy group Common Sense Media the private firms are selling the students' records to other businesses without the knowledge of the students, their parents or the schools that hired them. In California, the state senate passed a bill that banned the private firms from contracting with public schools which is good, but it only applies in California. The authors are right when they say that the federal government needs to address this issue as well so that all students in the United States are protected.

I agree with the authors when they state "As more of our children's education moves online, there are increased opportunities for abusing the collection of their personal data." This is obvious, but true. The world is now a generation of technology and internet, therefore students' records can now be easily stolen. We must protect the privacy rights of our nations' students.