LONE TREE

Every year since Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate launched the Carrie Chapman Catt Award in 2019, Lone Tree High School has earned the trophy for registering 90% or more of its eligible students to vote. It’s an achievement matched by only three additional schools in the state, and one Sec. Pate recognized with an in-person visit to the school on Monday, May 12.

Next year, he said, he expects to invite the senior class to Des Moines.

“We’ll roll out the red carpet and we will make sure you get VIP treatment – who knows, balloons, fireworks – we’ll do something special for you, because it is pretty significant,” Pate said. “We have over 120 schools across the state who have competed to get this award, and the fact that not just once, but six times – that’s why we had to go to the placard now, because my budget’s only got so much,” he joked.

Lone Tree now gets a plaque added to the huge gold trophy each time they succeed, rather than additional trophies to fill up their display cases.

Humor aside, stressing one’s rights and responsibilities as a voter is serious business for Pate, part of whose job is to supervise elections, and he’s fortunate to have high school social studies teacher Michael Dickinson and administrators at Lone Tree sharing his passion and passing that down to students.

Pate shared the origins of the Carrie Chapman Catt Award with the junior and senior classes, where they gathered in the library for the award presentation.

“We were at a point where we knew we had a big portion of our population who needed more attention, more motivation, more focus, so they could become more of a voter,” he said – that is, 18–25-year-olds, who typically vote in low numbers. The award was named after Carrie Chapman Catt, an Iowan and leader of the American women’s suffrage movement whose work helped secure women the right to vote in 1920.

“[She] kind of convinced men to vote to let women vote,” Pate said. “I share this with you because it seems unrealistic to think about half our population wasn’t given the right to vote. Well, you now have the right to vote. In fact, I worked very hard as your Secretary of State to get 17-year-olds the right to register to vote and be able to vote if they were 17 and a half in a November election.”

“I want to make sure you’re out there and you’re voting because your voice does count. We have elections that have consequences,” he continued, noting that a mere six votes from the 2nd Congressional District in which the students reside determined the 2020 congressional race. “This room could have decided who that congressperson was,” he said.

Johnson County Auditor Julie Persons accompanied Pate to Lone Tree; responsible for local, state and federal elections held in the county, she too could speak to the importance of voting.

This fall school board and city council seats will be on the ballot, and “these are the people who are going to be making laws that affect you very, very closely,” she told the students. Voting in the election “is a really great opportunity to have your voice heard.”

Both Pate and Persons commended the students and school, and Dickinson praised them as well.

“We are one of four schools in the state that have actually pulled this off, all six years of the program. I’m pretty proud of us,” Dickinson said. “I’m pretty proud of you guys for getting this done.”