A.R.S. § 16-531 already opens a door. The question is whether counties will use it. Technology changes. The oath does not.
Source: TAKE BACK OUR FUTURE: Youth Want to Count the Vote
The film is civic education, not a party ad. Young people — twelve, fourteen, fifteen, seventeen — are shown learning a hand-count: caller, talliers, quality control. In the room, their tally matched the adults. The point is not that children should run Arizona’s elections. The point is that a generation being told it is “the future” is asking to see the process before it inherits the result.
Arizona law already contemplates part of that. A.R.S. § 16-531(F) lets a county board of supervisors appoint a minor who will be at least sixteen on election day as a clerk of election, if the rest of the statute is met: U.S. citizenship, adult supervision by a trained election officer, training from the officer in charge of elections, and written permission from a parent or guardian. A school absence for that service is not to be counted against the pupil.
That is a clerk’s seat under adult watch. It is not a blank check for every hand-count job, and the video says so. Read the statute before anyone treats a training exercise as a new rule.
Watch The Video
Donna Sherwin put the Navajo County piece on the record: juniors and seniors are already in the high schools; the law is already on the books; service now is how a sixteen-year-old becomes an inspector later. In Maricopa County, Supervisor Steve Gallardo said he applauds the effort and called youth engagement in the process remarkable. The Board that can appoint clerks is the same Board that meets in Phoenix. The question for the next agenda is practical: will Maricopa use § 16-531(F), under the limits the Legislature wrote, so young citizens can learn the count in the open?
This site does not tell anyone how to vote. It does say a republic is safer when the next generation can watch a ballot become a number with their own eyes.
“Train up a child in the way he should go.”
— Proverbs 22:6
You keep calling them the future. The statute says some of them can serve now. Put the adults on the record. Let the young people see the count.
We the people — youth also count.
