Kids Vote

From the BCCT. Kids voting taking place in area schools, including Morrisville.

Students get chance to have votes counted
Students have been gearing up for the mock election with events like “Rock N’ Rap the Vote” at Everett A. McDonald Elementary School.
By JOAN HELLYER

Students from across Bucks County and Eastern Montgomery County will converge on Kids Voting booths today to show what they’ve learned about the U.S. election process.

The kids will participate in a nationwide mock election staged at actual polling places between 3:30 p.m. and 8 p.m. where adults will cast real ballots in the presidential, congressional and state office races.

The non-partisan project is aimed at encouraging students to be informed voters and engaged citizens once they are eligible to vote, organizers said. It also serves as a way to make sure the kids’ parents exercise their right to vote.

In the days leading up to the election, students have participated in mock debates, elections and other activities like the “Rock N’ Rap the Vote” event staged Monday at Everett A. McDonald Elementary School in Warminster.

Fifth-graders at the Centennial school hosted the combination of mime, poetry, dance, skits, song and mock debate for their fellow schoolmates to help them learn the evolvement of voting rights in the U.S.

This is the first election in which students in the lower end of Bucks County are participating in the Kids Voting mock election by penciling in mock ballots.

In some cases, like in the Morrisville School District, Kids Voting booths are set up in each polling place.

But in other districts, there are only a few Kids Voting places set up. If that’s the case, students can go to any Kids Voting station in their district to cast their mock ballot, irrespective of where their parents are registered to vote, said Richard Coe, executive director of Kids Voting Southeast PA.

In Bensalem, students can cast a Kids Voting ballot in several locations, including mock polling places set up at Cornwells and Russell C. Struble elementary schools and Cecelia Snyder Middle School, organizers said.

Additionally, Kids Voting booths will be set up in each of Bristol Township’s elementary schools, and at Neshaminy’s Joseph Ferderbar Elementary School in Lower Southampton and Oliver Heckman and Herbert Hoover elementary schools in Middletown.

Students in the Bristol and Pennsbury school districts already cast their ballots during mock elections staged in their schools within the past week. An estimated 100,000 Kids Voting ballots are expected to be tallied during the 2008 election cycle, Coe said. In the last presidential election, students voted, much like a majority of registered voters, in favor of re-electing incumbent George W. Bush to a second term as president.

Preliminary results from Kids Voting mock elections staged over the past week in area schools show Democratic candidate Barack Obama with a commanding lead over John McCain.

Project organizers expect to know by Thursday the final results of the 2008 Kids Voting Southeast PA mock election.