RCMS held a mock election for both seventh- and eighth-graders this year. The mock election is held every two years, and this year students were voting on who they wanted to be president. Students could either vote for Joe Biden, Jo Jorgensen or Donald Trump.

“The most important factor when voting is knowing what your own views are,” said Aarna Bhamidipati, a seventh-grader at RCMS. “If you know that, it’s a whole lot easier to pick a candidate to vote for.”

A mock election is similar to a real life election for an individual or group wants as president or other positions, but the results do not have any effect towards the real thing. Because of this, students at RCMS were allowed to vote through a form for one of the candidates. 

Teachers said that it was important that students had this opportunity. It teaches them to research the candidates so that you know more about them before voting and to help them feel better connected with real life politics. When students are taught to research they can make better and informed decisions when they are older, not only about elections but about many other things as well.

“I think that the mock election was important,” Aarna said. “I mean for one, we learned how to be informed voters in preparing for it, and how our votes do matter.” 

When students are well educated about these topics, it can help increase the amount of young voters. When someone finds out that their vote matters they may want to try and impact results with their votes.

Emily San Jose did not participate in the Rachel Carson Middle School 2020 virtual mock election but she still believes that the mock election is an important thing to participate in.

“I think that having a mock election is important because it teaches us what happens in a real election and prepares us for the real world,” she said. “I would have liked to participate in this year’s mock election.”

Students will only be able to participate in the mock election one time when they are in middle school. The 2020 mock election was a presidential election, which is not something that all middle school students get to experience since they usually have mayor or governor mock elections.

This year’s Rachel Carson Middle Schools mock election results were 903 votes for Joe Biden, 116 for Donald Trump and 23 for Jo Jorgensen.

“I really enjoyed the mock election,” reported Arnav Majeti. “I would like to see another event like this.”