Submitted by Mrs. Cynthia Eifert
On November 7th, the day before the actual polls opened for the 2016 Presidential Election, the students at York Suburban Middle School had the opportunity to participate in their own Mock Presidential Election. To help the students of YSMS better understand our election process, a group of eighth grade students (Macie Brown, Jack Ports, Caitlin Springer, Brooke Sargen, Alex Gleba, Devlin Ravegum, Michael Forster, and Ella Dunmire) created a video which outline how the electoral process works. With the assistance of Mr. Moran, Mrs. Campbell, and Mrs. Eifert, the students decided to simulate the electoral process at the middle school.
To model the electoral process, each classroom was designated to represent one of our 50 states or the District of Columbia, Each room voted and the appropriate number of electoral votes was recorded based on the popular votes for that classroom. To simulate how election results would actually come in on election night, classes voted by time zone and the results were reported live from the t.v. studio. Mr. Jackson and Mr. Payne did a wonderful job reporting and analyzing the results as they came into the studio. The students were able to see comparisons between popular and electoral votes and to watch to see which presidential candidate would reach the magic number of 270 electoral votes needed to become President of the United States. The students left school that day with a better understanding of the election process and with an increased anticipation to see what the actual results would be in the 2016 Presidential Election.
