Encouraging Votership in Mock Election
On 6 June 2018, MGCI took part in a province-wide mock election organized by a national education charity called CIVIX. A polling station was set up in the cafeteria with three cardboard voting booths and two ballot boxes. The event ran the entire day, however, the majority of students voted during lunch.
CIVIX coordinates student mock elections like this one to get youth interested in politics. This election was held in parallel to the Ontario provincial election, which took place on 7 June 2018. Students at MGCI had the opportunity to vote for the Member of Provincial Parliament candidates for the Don Valley West riding. There were five candidates running: Kathleen Wynne of the Liberal Party, Jon Kieran of the Progressive Conservative Party, Amara Possain of the New Democratic Party, Morgan Bailey of the Green Party, and John Kitterage of the Libertarian Party.
Student volunteers helped keep track of which students voted to ensure that nobody voted more than once. In total, twenty-seven students and ten teachers volunteered to facilitate the voting process.
This year, three hundred and thirty four Garneau students voted. This is considerably lower than the last student vote in which four hundred and ninety seven students participated. The results were announced on 8 June 2018 on the morning announcements. The NDP won with ___ votes. MGCI’s student opinion mirrors the provincial student opinion; the NDP won 27% of overall student votes.
Mr. Pearce, who has organized the Student Vote at Garneau for the past five years said that he was concerned with the low voter turnout and commented, “It’s important for students to participate in the Student Vote because the more familiar students are with the process of voting, the more likely they will be to vote in elections when they turn eighteen. It is also important because the results of Student Vote are reported by the mainstream media and political parties pay attention to the results, because they want to know what issues matter to the next generation of voters. As teachers we need to think about how we can do a better job getting our students interested in politics.”
