On November 5th, HBHA held a mock presidential election. The high school elective America Votes worked with the fourth and fifth graders to make the election possible. The election allowed all students from kindergarten to senior year the opportunity to vote as well as all of the faculty and staff.
Every four years, when there is a presidential election, HBHA offers the America Votes class led by Ms. Renee. Most years the America Votes class runs an election simulation for the school.
America Votes spent a lot of time preparing for this election. They made presentations to the fourth and fifth grades about the Electoral College and set up the voting booth.
This year, sophomore Norah Pabst chose to take the class. While talking about what it was like to set up the election with the fourth and fifth-grade class, she said, “They are kind of like the perfect age where you just kind of start understanding.”
Even though this was a joint effort between all the grades involved, Pabst explained that America Votes did more of the preparation work at the beginning, and then the fourth and fifth graders helped the actual election process run smoothly.
Pabst said, “I thought they were pretty excited, they seemed really happy that they got to it.”
To allow for the election to be an easier experience for the high schoolers, they had the opportunity to vote differently than the rest of the school. High schoolers got to early vote online to make tallying on election day run more smoothly. “We know high school could handle it on their own because they know how to click a button on Google form,” says Pabst.
At the end of the day, they announced the results to the whole school over the intercom. The results were that Harris won the popular vote and the Electoral College vote in the mock presidential election.
When creating and running an election, things are most likely gonna happen, but thankfully the only problem to occur was too few ballots printed. Thankfully this year’s mock election was a success.
The America Votes class, fourth grade, and fifth grade all did a great job preparing and running the election at HBHA this year.
