Dallas students get election education

DALLAS TWP. – C.J. Good was succinct. He voted for former Gov. Mitt Romney because I'm a Republican. (President Barack) Obama had his chance.

Considering Good is a Dallas Middle School eighth-grade student still a few years away from actually registering to vote, one assumes he is Republican in spirit at the moment, but as he worked the polls in the school lobby Friday, he kept his approach apolitical, handing out ballots without comment.

A quick sampling of students lining up to participate in the mock election suggested Romney would win – four of five questioned said they would vote for him. A look at the tally board in the newsroom where election returns were updated and broadcast school-wide throughout the day suggested otherwise. With five homerooms counted, Obama was ahead around lunchtime, winning four of them.

The school took the mock election to a high level of mock realism, Principal Tom Duffy noted. Students had to sign in before voting, for starters (no voter photo ID required, though), and an Electoral College was created by proportionately assigning electoral votes to each home room. The candidate who won the homeroom, regardless of how close the tally was, won all electoral votes for that room.

Whenever a homeroom vote was completed and totaled, a white square tacked on the wall in the broadcast center would be changed to blue for Obama or red for Romney, thus giving students a visual glance at who was winning during any update.

If Good had been laconic, Issa Dahdal was positively loquacious in explaining his vote for Romney. In the presidential debate he presented his five point plan. I believe he will succeed because of his business experience, the seventh-grade student said. If he lowers the individual tax rate on small business owners, he'll help grow more businesses, which will help us reduce the national debt.

Hmmm … More articulate than some national pundits in recent months.

Who won? By 2:45 p.m., minutes from school dismissal, the numbers were finalized: Romney won the popular vote, 347 to 331, and the electoral vote, 136 to 102.