The Asian American Society, Muslim Student Association and Advocating for Change Today (ACT) club hosted a meeting Tues., Oct. 9 after school in the black box theater. Ammar Ahmed, South Florida representative of Empowering Engaged Muslim Americans Organization (Emgage), came to talk to students about the impact of voting within minority groups. Emgage focuses on driving Muslims in the United States to become active participants within their community through voter registration and educational initiatives.
Ahmed’s presentation touched on topics such as the 2020 census and expanded on the reintroduction of immigration to the census and the repercussions it can have. “It (the new addition to the census) might discourage people from filling out the census because now the government has one more piece of information saying they are not citizens,” Ahmed said. “It leads to the question of is there someway you can be removed and if you can, representation goes down.”
Following through on the topic of representation, Ahmed addressed the current senate race between Bill Nelson and Rick Scott, pointing out their age and ethnicity in comparison to that of Florida’s. “You literally have two old white men duking it out for one to remain in power and the other to remain the next U.S. senator,” Ahmed laughed. He went on to address Broward county’s population, which according to the U.S census consists of twenty two point six percent minority groups and twenty point one percent of people over sixty.
Consequently, Ahmed pointed out that neither senator nor their staff is an accurate representation of Florida’s demographic.
Closing off his speech, Ahmed came to the final point of the impact that minority group votes can have. Touching on mailers, who send packages personally addressed to you to in attempts to sway your vote. One example given was Detroit’s large Arab population, where mailers were sent in Arabic. “They court your vote, whatever language you’re speaking in, they’ll come and speak that language to you,” Ahmed said. Often times, this can be enough to outweigh their counterparts.
In a more personal example, Ahmed addressed Andrew Gillum’s unexpected shift in the polls, primarily due to Broward County votes. In addition to Gillum being African American, his staff represented a diverse mix of people of color including Cubans, Haitians and Jamaicans. This, in combination with his heavy campaign on medicare expansion, won him votes from minority groups that pushed him into a contending position.
Ahmed closed off his speech by asking students what it meant to be a democracy which gave students a chance to reflect what they learned.
“Throughout the speech, Ahmed really spoke about how the demographics of society has changed and how important voices are. My definition of democracy is now more clear,” sophomore Rebecca Chiet said.
