This year, De Soto High School Student Council made a change from paper ballots to computerized voting for Homecoming king and queen.

“The administration and us [STUCO] got together and thought it was way more efficient,” said Student Council sponsor Katie Meserko.

In the past, voting has consisted of students circling the names of their choice for king and queen on a piece of paper that Student Council handed out during seminar.

However, with the shift from paper to computer, voting looked very different this year.

Instead, voting took place at lunch over a span of three days. Students were able to go up and vote for the candidates of their choice and then their name was crossed off the list.

Though computerized voting made it an easier process, there were a few drawbacks.

“Not as many people voted because they didn’t know that’s what the computers were for,” said senior Student Council member Allison Eaton.

Meserko, on the other hand, did not think this was necessarily a bad thing.

“Those who just circle names to circle names, we got to eliminate that portion of the student body,” Meserko said.

Students outside of Student Council agreed that the new system was beneficial as well.

“I think the way we did it in years past was a little bit more traditional, but I think it’s definitely more effective to do it with the computers,” senior Julia Sanders said.

Overall, the computerized voting was successful. “It saved a lot of time… and was a lot less room for error,” Meserko said.

Due to the success of computerized voting during Homecoming, Student Council plans on using computerized voting for the Queen of Winter Sports dance later this year and for other voting situations in the future.