If Southern Boone Elementary and High School students are any indicator, Republicans were going to have a very good day on Tuesday.

The election was not rigged – and it wasn’t even close.

SoBoCo Elementary students, from left: Ava Leininger, Olivia Long, Tucker Cummings and Jadon Martin stand by at the ballot box as students began their voting in last week's mock presidential election.

SoBoCo Elementary students, from left: Ava Leininger, Olivia Long, Tucker Cummings and Jadon Martin stand by at the ballot box as students began their voting in last week’s mock presidential election.

Republican Donald Trump polled 228 votes, not quite 50% of the 432 votes in the three-way race. However, the surprise came when Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson garnered 161 votes, nearly 100 more than Democrat Hillary Clinton’s 61 votes.

Republican Eric Grietens won the mock Missouri Governor’s race by out-polling Chris Koster 147-73.

But for both elementary students, the mock election was not about who won as much as it was learning about the election process. For high school seniors, it was about learning about and discussing the issues.

Fourth grade teacher Hope Sickmeier organized the Elementary School election, which included voting by students in all three grades, faculty, staff and even a few visitors.

“We want the students to understand the importance of voting as well as the balloting process,” Sickmeier said. “We don’t want the students to get into arguments that they see other adults fall into, but we want them get an idea of how ballots are cast.”

The students had ballot box monitors and even passed out “I Voted” red, white and blue stickers. Other students were charged with compiling the ballots, utilizing a Google program on their classroom computers.

~ Read more in today’s Journal ~

By Bruce Wallace