November 6th, the 2012 Presidential Election, was a big day in history for the United States. For a small amount of FMHS students, this was also their first experience voting.
There were three different parties for the students to choose from: Independent, Republican, and Democratic. Although the opinions for this election were centered around the Democratic candidate, President Barack Obama, and the Republican candidate, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, there was also an Independent choice. The Independent choice consists of the Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson, Green Party candidate Jill Stein, and Constitutional Party candidate Virgil Goode.
By having a mock election, all the students who weren’t old enough to vote had the chance. The student council held the election laying it out so it was easy for students to vote. There were three different colors of paper each resembling a political party; yellow for Independent, red for Republican, and blue for Democratic. To vote, students wrote their name and grade on the color paper that matched their choice.
“The mock election doesn’t compare because the real vote had a lot more options on the ballot, and they were done electronically,” Senior Andrew Ebert said. This was Andrews first time participating in the actual election for President. Andrew said that he felt as though his vote didn’t count considering Texas is a “sure Republican” state. A sure Republican state is a state that’s majority of votes are predicted to be Republican.
Another way the elections differ was how each ballot was counted. For FMHS, the Newspaper and Photo Journalism classes counted the ballot. Romney received the popular vote in the FMHS election, but Obama won the National election due to his higher number of electoral votes.
Although it was only a mock election, students jumped the chance to participate. In the end, the results proved that most FMHS students prefer Republican candidate Mitt Romney. The mock election was a good event for FMHS students to hold so that students ineligible to vote could have the chance to. The experience was educational and sparked the inner politician in some of the FMHS students.
