ALL THINGS JOURNALISM
Reporter's Insight
This story came about when a teacher reached out to me and told me Wingspan should do a story about a mock election he was putting on. To fully understand how the mock election went down I followed the teacher and his students around for three days while they ran it. In this story, I wanted to point out two particular issues that may also reflect modern-day voting. First, is peer pressure. A lot of the students who came to vote did so in groups. On the first day, a couple groups would walk in and sit next to each other. However, they could look at each other’s screens. This was an issue because sometimes the group would be voting for different candidates and someone would get mad at another person and tell them to change their vote. But by the second day, the students running the election put up cardboard around the computers so this didn’t happen again. The second issue was that students didn’t realize they would also be voting on Amendments. Because most of the students didn’t know the Amendments they just voted at random. Overall, I wanted to share these two issues to help inform students of what the voting process will look like when they are voting in real elections and to avoid these two problems in the future.
INFOGRAPHIC BY: GLENNIS WOOSLEY
Results of 2024 NHS mock election which took place from Oct. 31 through Nov. 4 in computer lab B at the library.
Mock Election in Motion
NHS students got to take part in a cabinet run mock election
The Nixa High School mock election wrapped up on Monday, Nov. 4. The presidential, senate and governor results reflected statewide and national outcomes that took place in the November election.
Advanced placement government teacher Alexander Edwards, along with Cabinet members ran the mock election Oct. 31 through Nov. 4 at the high school.
“[The] mock election is a simulated election that uses the same questions from the actual ballot, and it gives our students an opportunity to get involved in the democratic process,” Edwards said.
Students lined up outside of the computer lab. As each student got their names checked off a list, specific to their grade levels, they entered the room and sat down at a computer. Then they filled out a Google form survey, stopping at each question and considering the potential results of their vote.
On the ballots, there were an array of questions, including amendments to the Missouri state constitution.
“It’s a better representation of what students will be getting themselves into later in life when they are actually voting come election day,” senior Alex Dollar said. “Also, I think students not really knowing about the amendments and understanding them is also a representation of politics in general.”
Aside from trying to make the mock election realistic, there were a few issues Cabinet encountered when trying to prevent people from talking to each other when voting.
“We had quite a bit people … as a joke, saying who to vote for,” Dollar said. “People [were] also asking what amendments meant because they didn’t know, and they didn’t even … know they would be voting for those in the first place.”
By the second day of the mock election, Cabinet members tried to stop students from discussing with each other while voting, by setting up cardboard dividers at each computer.
Edwards said that his primary goal in hosting the mock election was for students to model the democratic process.
“I care that they get to participate and see what it looks like,” Edwards said. “What I like is that we included all the amendment issues, and we had a lot of comments from students who started to vote and said, ‘I didn’t realize the ballot was this long.’“
To learn about the topics covered on ballots, Edwards said there are a lot of resources like The League of Women Voters.
“One of the best [resources] is the League of Women Voters,” Edwards said. “They’re a local organization. … They’ll bring in information from the national candidates and try to give a snapshot of what those people stand for. They’ll also, kind of break down the amendment issues so that people can understand them better.”