Bedford Elementary students hold mock election to learn about process

By Christa Desrets

Published: October 27, 2008

Bedford Elementary School students on opposing sides of the presidential race battled Monday to win over their classmates.

With a neutral fifth-grader moderating, two groups of five sixth-graders debated who should be president —Democratic candidate Barack Obama or Republican candidate John McCain.

“(McCain) wants to serve our country and make it a better place,” debated Glenn Field.

Lindsey Songer argued on the opposing side.

“Obama will be the one to lower taxes more,” she said. “All of your parents will get decreased taxes.”

The debate comes a few days before the conclusion of a six-week-long election project among gifted sixth-graders at the school. The finale will be a mock election on Thursday.

“I was really proud of how they could grasp a lot of this stuff, and then do a good job of pitching it on a kid level,” said Tony Martin, gifted resource teacher at the school.

He organized the project to mimic the real election on Nov. 4.

He divided the class of 12 students into Democrats and Republicans. They each chose their own side, and the groups ended up six and six.

Students chose their own debate topics to research, and each wrote speeches and made their own video commercial.

Then came the fun part — campaigning.

Each class in the school represents a “battleground state” and its designated number of electoral votes.

“One sixth-grade class is Florida, one is Ohio, and so on,” Martin said.

The Republicans and Democrats each were given a certain amount of virtual campaign money to spend on hanging posters, airing their own commercials and even making “campaign stops” in the classes where they need more votes.

“We had pollsters in the cafeteria at lunchtime,” Martin said, explaining how each decided in which classes they wanted to invest.

“One third-grade class was unanimously McCain (supporters), so the Democrats didn’t bother to go there,” he said.

The last poll indicated close results in the election — 42 percent Obama, 47 percent McCain and 11 percent undecided.

Even some of the students working on the project remain undecided.

“I’ve kind of switched back and forth a lot of times,” said Andrew Hornady, who represented McCain on the war in Iraq and health care.

At the debate, moderator Hannah Overstreet asked a series of questions that students had submitted.

“Who is going to lower taxes the most?”

“How are you going to handle medical expenses?”

“What are you going to do to make the schools better?”

Representing Obama, Scott Messier spoke about the war in Iraq and the environment.

“I thought it was fun,” he said. “I definitely learned a lot about the candidates.”

On the same team, Dan Brown learned so much that he even got his parents talking about education and vision, the two topics he covered for the debate.

“I thought it was a great experience for the kids,” said Kara Wagner-Brown, Dan’s mother. “He brought a lot of good discussion to our dinner table.”