Newburyport Seniors Host Mock Election

Lily DeJordy, Eilish Nye, Martina Gutiérrez Sanchez, Laurel Soward

With the 2024 election approaching, Newburyport High School’s civic classes are holding a mock election at the school for all grade levels, in order to encourage youth voter participation for the future. In the lead up to the student election on November 4th, civics and government students completed projects with the aim to become more involved in the electoral process.

Background

Citizens of the United States have the privilege of living in a democracy. As a result, Americans, once of age, have the ability to decide who runs the government, what they aim to accomplish, and how they go about doing it. 

A typical trend in U.S elections is a lack of involvement from the younger demographics, with less than half of the 18-29 age group voting in each election. Young people, in having had less time to build essential voting habits, and prioritizing other tasks, are less likely to cast their votes. As a result, many schools have been trying to promote the importance of exercising this civic duty. 

Through Mock Elections, students have an opportunity to start building voting habits, and better understand the electoral process. It is designed to help students understand the power behind voting. 

With the 2024 election being a divisive, neck-to-neck race, it is especially important that students are educated on these topics and procedures.  Among all the years to be educated on voting, this is the year. The mock election that students will participate in will act as an exercise  for students being more involved in their political surroundings. Newburyport High School is taking an active step in promoting voter turnout for the younger generations.

The Project

On Monday November 4th, 2024, Newburyport High School will be holding a mock election. The mock election will be run primarily by the 12th grade civics classes, and will be open to all students who have been registered as voters. Students will receive a ballot to cast their vote during all three lunch periods.

Mr. Wulf, principal of NHS, when asked about the significance of the project said, “I think the way Mr.LaChapelle, and the other teachers for the civics classes, have set up the program teaches students to look at both sides of an issue and really take emotion out of it.” The principal also mentioned that he,“think[s] voting is very important and….it's teaching students and even adults; make sure you’re well versed on what the issues are.” Other teachers around the school also have high hopes for the project. When asked about her view on the importance of the mock election, Ms.DeCarciofolo, a fellow civics teacher stated, ”I hope that students in my class will be able to learn about the issues and understand the debates that the US is dealing with.” 

When exploring politics in schools, there is always a risk of controversy and heightened tensions. In response, Mr.LaChapelle shared that “That is kind of what I always have in the back of my mind. For me though, I am willing to fight that fight in order to have this process because for me it is a lot more important for [students] to have an experience like this, instead of me running away from it because I'm scared of backlash.”

For the project, students had to research and reflect on candidates –Harris, the chosen Democratic contender, and Trump, from the Republican party– stances on “hot ticket items” which included: Abortion, immigration/border security, gun rights, inflation and foreign policy.

Parts of the Project:

Paper & Presentations

As part of the overall project students were tasked with creating presentations about an issue of importance during this election cycle.

Mr. Provost explained that the students “researched the issue and wrote about a six or seven page paper after researching,” and that “the paper includes the Democratic Party’s side of the election, the Republican’s side and then finally the student’s own opinion.”

From there the students are grouped up based on their views and topic choices to present. 

When asked about the relevancy and planning of this project, DeCarciofolo replied: “This election was so divisive and we didn't want people to have to represent people that did not align with their political beliefs. We changed it to make it about the issues and students focusing on both parts of the issues.”

These presentations were not only shown to civics classmates but also to the student body because during Clipper Block on October 31st students were able to sign up to listen to different topics being discussed.

Posters:

An additional part of this project included creating posters. Mr. Provost shared that they completed “political posters, two that represent the neutral view of their issue, one that represents the Republican view, one that represents the Democratic.” This is an important part of the project because it mimics real life, and social media in a way, in which voters are constantly being bombarded with both sides of the election and different opinions. The posters were placed around the school during the week of Oct 28. 

The Impact:

When asked about student engagement with this election, Mr. Provost stated that “Hopefully it creates engagement and enthusiasm. We'll see when we actually get to this election part, but I know that my students, even though there's only about 18 of us, are definitely more engaged than I had initially anticipated and seem to be ready to engage in the actual election.” 

When asked how competitive this project was for students, Mr.LaChapelle stated, “This [year] I have actually taken steps to make it not competitive… It isn’t competitive, it is collaborative” and also “I think that the real life high stakes are enough to engage without me having to make it competitive. We’re already up to our necks in politics, so no need to spray the fire more. The fire is lit already.” 

When asked about their levels of engagement students responded positively. Declan Hochheiser, a current A.P. Government student whose project was tied to the Israel-Palestine conflict said “It taught us to be civically engaged and taught us really good research methods so we can figure out what’s happening in the world around us. So it will definitely help us in the long run.” and added “it was really nice to have class discussions especially with those who have different views than me” as that it “really helped everyone share their thoughts with each other and I think we all gained a lot of good communication skills”

Another student, Kayley Simons, who did her project on gun control, added “I really liked the project because I enjoyed being able to express my own beliefs while also trying to look for that middle ground”  and went on to say that “the idea of being able to reaffirm your candidate's position even further and getting the knowledge to back up your claims was intriguing”

The project by all accounts seems to have succeeded in its goal to engage students in the electoral process, and more specifically, the issues that are most prominent in the minds of Americans.

In reflecting on the experience as a whole, Mr.LaChapelle shared that: “everyone should continue to pay attention. Because this is not history. This is not a history class, this hasn’t already happened, it is currently happening. This is going to be an election [students] will remember for the rest of [their] lives. It will have far reaching implications after it happens.”

Lily DeJordy, Martina Gutiérrez Sanchez, Eilish Nye, Laurel Soward