Sari Kaufman
By Jill Fox
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School graduate Sari Kaufman is on a mission to educate and engage voters before the November election.
A freshman at Yale University, Kaufman has been a voting activist since the 2018 school shooting.
“After the shooting, I saw that lots of politicians lack accountability, but if someone isn’t educated on who they’re voting for, it’s impossible to hold them accountable,” she said.
A political science major, Kaufman, was a co-leader of March for our Lives and registered about 1,000 voters during the event in Parkland.
That’s how the MyVote Project began. Kaufman, along with professors David McAdams and Gita Stulberg, are the MyVoteProject’s founders, whose aim is to arm voters with relevant information before entering the voting booth.
Kaufman said they have over 300 high school and college volunteers, and at least 30 are from Parkland.
The nonpartisan education platform gives voters the background they seek to know the policies that impact their lives and the candidates who want to represent them at all levels of government.
When a user logs on, they enter their zip code, and all candidates running in their area will populate.
“Voters can learn about complex political issues in a digestible way and view where candidates stand,” said Kaufman.
On Wednesday, September 30, at 8 p.m., her organization will host a panel discussion on the new and historical challenges surrounding voting in the U.S., as well as strategies for navigating voting in 2020.
Panelists include Benjamin Bowser, an Emeritus Professor of Sociology at California State University East Bay; Anita Earls, an African-American civil rights attorney, educator, and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of North Carolina; Damon Huss, Editor of Bill of Rights in Action magazine at Constitutional Rights Foundation and director of California’s 3Rs Project on religion and 1st Amendment in public schools; and Esmeralda Simmons, Esq., a lawyer, and public servant who has spent decades fighting for human and civil rights on the federal, state, and municipal levels.
During the panel, they will discuss voters’ rights, voter fraud, absentee ballots, and how this election will be completely different from in the past and what those implications are.
Residents can attend who are questioning if they should vote in person, early or request a mail-in ballot even if they’re still on the verge of deciding how they should vote to make their vote count.
Register here for the panel discussion.
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Author Profile
- Jill Fox is an Emmy Award-winning writer and producer. She has worked in public relations and television for over 20 years. Fox lives in Parkland with her husband and their two children.
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