Students Elect Obama, Learn Civics in Mock Election

HARLEM, Nov. 4 — Over 300 people entered polling sites in Central Harlem Tuesday and voted in the presidential election, but their votes didn’t count.

That’s not because any voting machines were broken, but because they were students from sixth through eighth grade at Democracy Prep Charter School. They voted in a mock presidential election held at the Public School 175 polling site.

In pairs, students arrived and dropped paper ballots into a cardboard box wrapped with light-blue paper that was set off to the side of the voting booths and monitored by a teacher.

“Voting is red hot!” students chanted outside the school as they waited to vote. Others danced in place and cheered, “O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma!”

They stopped adults leaving the polls and gave them stickers that said, “Thank you for voting because I can’t.”

Democracy Prep’s founder, Seth Andrew, said the mock election was an exercise in civic responsibility, one of the school’s educational missions.

Barack Obama won the mock election with 99 percent of the school’s votes.

Andrew, a tall, dark-haired New Yorker whose voice carried across the school’s front courtyard, founded the middle school in 2005 to promote civic engagement and get students involved in the democratic process at an early age.

Although this is their first simulated presidential election, students have been holding mock elections on the local level for three years. Andrew said that this election has produced the biggest turnout and has been the most exciting.

Students were separated by homerooms, the way voters are classified by district.

Students also filled out voter registration cards and debated political issues in the weeks leading up to Election Day.

Some students filled out their registration cards incorrectly and were disappointed when they were not allowed to vote Tuesday. Andrew told them it was a real-life lesson in the importance of following directions and the responsibility of voting.

Classes went door to door and registered 150 adults for Tuesday’s election and distributed more than 2,000 remember-to-vote flyers in the prior days.

“They want to know someone’s supporting them because they can’t vote,” said Katie Duffy, director of development for the school, who wore a sticker reading, “I voted today because Daviene can’t.”

Daviene is a student at the college-preparatory charter school.

Duffy said that the students were almost evenly divided between Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Obama during the primaries. On Tuesday, she said, the majority of students were on Obama’s side.

“Obama understands from experience what us middle class and lower class are going though,” student Brandon Clarke, 12, said. “I would be happier if I was really able to vote.”

Like many of the charter school students, seventh grader Shyann Martin thinks an Obama win means change for America. The slender 12-year-old, who thinks Harlem feels “homey,” said that if McCain wins, “the country will turn destructive.”

Three men outside of Joseph’s Beauty Salon off Lenox Avenue and 134th Street clapped for the students as they walked to cast their ballots. They joined students, cheering, “Go Obama!”

“I think it’s good that the young people are involved,” Vanessa Suarez, a Harlem resident and voter, said. “It’s their future.”