Students take part in mock election

An Ocean Township Intermediate School seventh-grade class participates in a mock election last week. OCEAN TOWNSHIP — Days before voters across the country cast their ballots for the next president of the United States, students at one local middle school had already chosen who they wanted as the country's next commander in chief.

On Oct. 30, some 1,300 fifth-, sixth-, seventh and eighth-grade students at the Ocean Township Intermediate School (OTIS) participated in a school-wide mock election to select who they wanted as the next president of the United States.

OTIS teacher Jeannette Speck spearheaded the project as a creative way to teach her seventh grade social studies students about the Electoral College.

"I wanted to explain to the kids the [voting] process and the difference between the popular vote and the electoral vote and get them to understand the way in which a president is elected," Speck said.

"Before I taught the Electoral College, [the students] had no concept of what it meant," Speck said.

As part of a class project, students were responsible for designing ballots to be used in the school-wide election. They also created spreadsheets to input the 50 states and their corresponding electoral votes.

The students prepared school announcements to advertise the election, distributed packets explaining voting directions, and prepared follow-up announcements to detail the results of the election.

The mock election resulted in an overwhelmingmajority of students voting for Sen. Barack Obama over Sen. John McCain.

Following the school-wide vote, Speck's students were required to create a wall-size electoral map of the country to display in the school's common area. Students then compared the school-wide results to the outcome of the actual election.

The students also created a pamphlet providing information about the candidate who they wanted to win the election.

"I wanted to get [the students] to understand their candidates," Speck said. "This way when they said they wanted to pick a candidate, they understood their policies."

Students were responsible for researching information about the presidential and vice presidential candidates, including their political careers, where they stood on certain issues and what responsibilities they would have if elected.

The students also had to create a jingle to persuade people to vote for a certain candidate.

Speck said that in addition to learning about the election process, her students ended up developing a devotion to the candidate they chose to support and vote for.

"When I walked in [after the election], they were chanting for Obama and other students were upset because they wanted McCain to win," Speck said.

"It was interesting to see them arguing the election afterwards," she said. "It was the big talk of the school this week and last. They were very excited to see if their prediction was going to come through."

Speck piloted the election project during the 2004 election, when the majority of her students chose Sen. John Kerry to win the presidency over President George W. Bush.

Although the students' proposed outcomes may not always be accurate, Speck said she is simply happy to be teaching her students new concepts.

"For me, it's having the kids understand the whole electoral process," Speck said. "A lot of people out there don't get it. So as a teacher, it was really cool for me to teach a concept and for them to understand it."