In America we live in a democracy. That means that we, as citizens of the nation, determine the public policy that is enacted.

We all have an equal voice in electing officials who then speak for us. At least that’s how it’s supposed to work.

The students in Pedro Dos Santos’s Global Problems class began to look at flaws in the electoral process that happen in and outside of our nation. Part of our project and grade in this class was to inform the rest of the Baker community on election fraud.

In order to make a point, we thought about what college students cared about most.

Sadly, the answer to that question isn’t politics or global problems; often it’s not even the classes they go to. No, it’s food.

So we held a totally fake election, posing as the dining committee, to have students choose between two menus: a vegetarian one and one that included Chipotle and steak.

Without even counting the votes, we could tell the non-vegetarian option would win. The fact that people got so worked up about the thought of even having a meatless diet for a week was astonishing.

Now the point of this project wasn’t to just trick students, it was to prove a point.

We know a lot of students are a little upset about what we did, but it is important to look at the bigger picture.

The fact that more students voted for what food they wanted to eat than will vote in the presidential election in November is sad.

Think if you lived outside the United States. If you are lucky enough to be somewhere where you even get to vote, you can never really be sure if your vote was counted truthfully.

There are many different kinds of fraud. Some people impersonate others in order to vote more than once and stuff the ballot box. Many students helped us prove this when they voted seven or eight times.

We now ask students to look beyond what’s on their plate to what is actually happening in the real world that they’re missing.

Election fraud does happen and people suffer daily from it. If you think this doesn’t affect you, you’re wrong.

Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach has focused on the security of elections right here in the United States. His office drafted the Secure and Fair Elections (SAFE) Act, which was passed into law last year. The act lays out requirements for voters in order to cut down on election fraud.

These things do affect you. We hope you can move past being tricked by us and recognize the bigger problem at hand.