On Oct. 8, Woodside’s mock election was held at the top of the quad.
The mock election is an activity that is participated in by many high schools in California and sponsored by the Secretary of State. The school-wide mock election this year was run by Ramie Macioce, an Advanced Placement United States History (APUSH) teacher, and Callie Shypertt, a government and economics teacher.
“This is a fundamental right that people have fought for for many hundreds of years,” Macioce said. “Every person needs to take advantage of this opportunity [to vote].”
All students were encouraged to go to the top of the quad at lunch and fill out a ballot identical to the real general elections ballot. Macicoe talks about how they tried to make this election as professional and accurate as possible.
“We’re doing it during lunch and not just passing ballots out in class because we wanted it to feel like a real election,” Macioce said. “[Everyone has their] little separators so you can have privacy and actually fill out a paper ballot, not on your phone, and put it in the ballot box and then get your sticker [like a real election].”
The actual process of getting involved in this state-wide mock election was not very difficult, according to Macioce, and she suggests all schools get involved so students can have the opportunity to participate in an election.
“[In order to participate] you [have to] register with the state of California. They send you the ballots, some posters and information,” Macioce said. “The hardest part was probably just organizing the actual election time period. Since this is the first time that we’re doing it, we didn’t know if everybody would be able to have enough time to vote during lunch.”
Due to it being Macioce and Shypertt’s first time running this event, there were many challenges to face, such as what-ifs and time crunches.
“We have to have the results [of the election] back by five o’clock [on the day of the mock election], so tallying up the results, getting those done [will be challenging],” Macioce said. “[We will] live and learn, so next time, we may possibly open up to early voting, which [also] mimics how real voting goes. But it’s our first time so it’s trial and error for this first run.”
This unique opportunity has come upon the Woodside students, but what is the purpose?
“It’s all about voter turnout,” Macioce said. “We would like to exceed the National Voter turnout percentage, it would be fabulous. Then we’ll have a baseline, and next time we do the mock collection, see what we can do just in real life to get more voices heard.”
From this mock election, everyone will be able to see the results of Woodside’s elections, as well as the election as a whole with all the California schools that participated.
“This is an amazing opportunity for students,” Macioce said. “Go vote!”
The results of the mock election: Out of 357 votes, 31% of students voted for Donald Trump and JD Vance, while nearly 61% of students voted for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.
