 |
HAWKINS TEAGUE/Ledger & Times
Hannah Cochran, left, Claire Barnett and Taylor Butler take a look at the voting tallies yesterday with Ross Kelley, a student teacher at Murray High School. |
Students take part in politics
By HAWKINS TEAGUE
Staff Writer
While the juniors who organized mock elections at Murray and Calloway County high schools won't be able to vote in this election, the work they've done in class recently has made them think seriously about the issues that will determine the future of the country.
Juniors in MHS teacher Scott Turner's social studies classes watched the second presidential debate at Nashville's Belmont University and discussed the positions of Republican nominee John McCain and Democratic nominee Barack Obama. Students all wrote a paper on five things they learned from the debates, and several students said it got them interested enough to wish they were a year older and registered to vote.
LaTasha Martin said she had never paid much attention to politics before but that she was very interested now. Penny Hammond said she thought Obama seemed more interested in issues that affected children and was concerned about the next generation. Lonnie Martin agreed with her, saying he seemed more focused on the future.
Bo Moss said he been eager to watch the first debate after he watched President Bush's announcement about the economy a few days before. He said that although he wasn't a strong supporter of either candidate, he would probably vote for Obama if he were 18.
Turner's classes voted on Wednesday and counted the votes Thursday morning. Obama won 60 percent of the vote with 195 votes and McCain took 39 percent with 129 votes. U.S. Senate candidate Bruce Lunsford won 175 votes to Republican incumbent Mitch McConnell's 138 votes. U.S. Representative Ed Whitfield won 173 votes and his Democratic challenger, Heather Ryan, claimed 128 votes.
Turner said he reported the results to the Kentucky Secretary of State's office to participate in the mock election it hosts every cycle. According to Secretary Trey Grayson's Web site, he was hoping this year to beat the total of 50,000 student participants in 2004. The running tally as of 9:17 this (Friday) morning showed 48.6 percent of Kentucky students voting for McCain and 47 percent voting for Obama. McConnell won 52.8 percent of the vote to Lunsford's 47.2 percent. Whitfield won 56.5 percent to Ryan's 43.5 percent.
Marshall Ward's AP history class as CCHS took a different approach to organizing a mock election. Students in the class were assigned a candidate to research and they had to put together what they found and tell students in the halls why they should vote them.
Ward said that students in all grades were required to register to vote if they wanted to participate in the mock election and could only vote during their lunch period and 30 minutes before and after school. He said there was also no guarantee that the 364 registered voters out of 992 students would make it to the polls yesterday in the school's media center. He said he thought his method was a better representation of a real election than the Secretary of State's mock election, to which their results were not reported.
“It brings to the surface the problems with holding an election in a democracy,” he said.
Most of the students used the candidates' Web sites as their primary source for their research, but a few found information elsewhere too. Some of them happened to be in favor of their candidates, but others found it difficult to advocate for candidates they didn't particularly like. Alaina Mikulcik, for example, said she didn't agree with Lunsford's positions on abortion or “big government programs that cost a lot.”
Ali Love advocated for McCain and Cedric Roberts advocated for Obama. Kayla Todd and Erin Towery researched Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin and Haley McCuiston advocated for Libertarian candidate Bob Barr. Kevin Shelton campaigned in the halls for Independent Party candidate Ralph Nader and said he thought Nader and Obama were particularly popular with the students.
Teela Etheridge advocated for McConnell and Lacey Ellis advocated for Whitfield. Jennifer Canter and Chelsea Ellis both looked up Ryan. Canter said she tried to get in touch with Ryan but was unsuccessful. She said she was disappointed that the positions on her Web site were generic and not very specific.
Karson Cross had more cooperation from her candidate, 1st District State Senate candidate Carroll Hubbard. She said she reached him at his law office and that he was very honest and upfront about the time he spent in federal prison, both on the phone and when he spoke to the class Wednesday. Carrie Love had met her candidate, Republican Sen. Ken Winters, before in Frankfort on a school trip and said she enjoyed meeting him again when he also made an appearance at the school on the same day.
Results of the CCHS election were not available before press time.
Story created Oct 31, 2008 - 12:10:44 EDT.
|
