By Mackenzie Armstead | staff writer
Johnson is introducing students to politics by holding a mock election. This exciting event brings together the whole school to predict the results of Super Tuesday in the election. Government teacher Patricia Castellanos explains all of the details.
“Tomorrow [March 1st] is Super Tuesday for the elections, the primaries, and there’s a bunch of states that are voting- Texas is one of them,” Castellanos said. “So, we are going to hold a mock election here on campus. Where all the students will vote through their social studies classes with their social studies teachers. Teachers will either take them to the library or bring in iPads for them to vote on. They have to choose the republican or the democratic primary and then they’ll get to cast their votes.”
This is the campus’ first year to use the mock election to mirror the countrie’s primaries.
“This is the first election at Johnson where we vote for the Democratic and Republican parties and then in the fall, in November, when we actually have the presidential election race, we are going to hold another one,” Castellanos said. “I started thinking about this last semester, as the campaign started getting really exciting and all the candidates started announcing that they were running for president. I thought it would be really fun to organize a mock election to get the government students involved, but also the whole campus involved. And so I spoke with Ms. Sanchez the librarian, and my department chair Ms. Dubose, to have a hand at putting it together.”
The experience is open to all grades, unlike a real election where only eighteen year olds and up could actually vote. Also, teachers are more than welcome to vote to. The fact that it is online is great for easily voting during class.
“It is going to be all students. Ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth also all staff. It is a google form on the computer and it’s online,” Castellanos said.
The event is supposed to give the students a chance to learn about the whole election process and voting.
“I think it will help them [students] learn how voting works and how primaries work versus just general elections that we have to vote for our candidates in each party first before we have the general election. And just how they’ll get involved, in the importance of participation that democracy requires participation and kind of what the whole voting process is about.”
Before the real election happened on television, Castellanos was asked about how the mock election was going to relate to the actual one. She is hopeful that the mock election can “predict” what the real election will be.
“We have to see what the results look like. We are going to try to have the results by the end of the day tomorrow. So hopefully before the end of eighth period we’ll make an announcement and see. The actual results of Super Tuesday for Texas will be Tuesday night, so the students can actually go home and watch the news on Tuesday night and see if their candidate actually won.”
According to the New York Times article March 8 Primary Election Results, Donald Trump won for the republican with the most states and Hillary Clinton won with the most states for the democrats. The mock election did seem to predict Donald Trump winning, but Hillary’s win was a twist in the results.
