Getting election information is too difficult

To the Editor:
As 12th grade students in Mr. Redeker's Participation in Government class at Goshen High School, we tried to get educated about the candidates and issues for the election cycle that ended on Nov. 5, 2013.

Historical data depicts young adults (18-25) are least likely to vote (www.census.gov). As young adults, we are expected to make good decisions for our community, but that's impossible since we don't have enough information. It was extremely difficult to access information for each candidate and what their beliefs and plans for the future were.

We are media-savvy students who searched the internet and the local newspapers. Why didn't the candidates have websites? Why were the newspapers so disjointed in presenting information? Extensive internet searches yielded very little information, and flipping through numerous pages in a newspaper is unhelpful and time-consuming.

It would be helpful if the newspapers made a full-page spread of all the candidates and their plans to help the community with an easy-to-read chart presenting the candidate information. We would also like to see more than just signs with candidates' names in our communities. Candidates should spend more money on getting their point across via websites and social media, and less money on putting signs on every inch of grass.

It is a good thing that most of our class was too young to vote this month, because we were uninformed. Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Richard Price on Jan. 8, 1789, said, "Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them right."

This election has attracted our notice. It must be set right.

The future voters of Jonathan Redeker’s social studies class, Goshen High School