Parkland victims to vote for first time

Student survivors of the mass shooting heading to the polls next week

PARKLAND, Fla. — Nine months after 17 classmates and teachers were gunned down at their Florida school, Parkland students are finally facing the moment they’ve been leading up to with marches, school walkouts and voter-registration events throughout the country: their first Election Day.

The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student activists set their sights on the 4 million U.S. citizens turning 18 this year. They’re hoping to counteract the voter apathy that’s especially prevalent among the youth during midterm elections. Many of the activists, now household names like David Hogg, postponed college plans to mobilize young voters. Many of them support gun reform, in the name of their fallen classmates.

“It is kind of the culmination of everything we’ve been working for,” said senior Jaclyn Corin, one of the founders of the March For Our Lives group. “This is truly the moment that young people are going to make the difference in this country.”

Corin, who voted along with her dad at an early polling site on her 18th birthday, visited a half-dozen cities in just a handful of days last week, getting up at 3 a.m. to board planes.

It has been a whirlwind for the students, with celebrity support from Oprah to Kim Kardashian, a Time magazine cover, late night TV spots and book deals — but all of it misses their main target unless it motivates students to cast ballots by the end of Tuesday.

At a University of Central Florida event during the final week of election campaigning, Stoneman Douglas graduate and current UCF student Bradley Thornton escorted fellow students to the campus’ early voting site. UCF student Tiffany McKelton said she wouldn’t have voted if the Parkland activists hadn’t shown up on campus.

“I’ve never voted in a primary election. I actually did it because of them,” said McKelton, a psychology major from West Palm Beach.

In the past months they’ve boarded countless buses and planes, passed out T-shirts, and hosted BBQs and dance parties on college campuses around the U.S.

Thornton said talking things through often does the trick.

“I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had that were like, ‘Ah, I’m not interested’ … and through just a simple, really nice cordial conversation, they get this magical inspiration to vote,” Thornton said.

Corin said she’s encountered plenty of voter apathy along the way.

The students often note that voter turnout in the last midterm elections was the lowest since World War II.

“It’s really about tying it back to gun violence or tying it back to immigration or whatever that person is passionate about,” Corin said.