School of Discovery students were able to cast their vote last week for candidates of their choice in their mock election as part of their social studies and history classes.

Principal Cicely Curtis said they had mock elections every year.

“Anytime there is an election here because our voter turnout is so low in this area, that is one practice we have in place in training our scholars to be productive citizens. Their civic responsibility is to vote, and we are trying to instill that into them now, and let them know the value of it and how important it is to vote.

“We never miss an opportunity to allow our scholars to vote,” said Curtis. “Through our history classes, we get the teachers to educate them about the candidates. All of our teachers are involved in that actually. We want them to understand their vote matters.

“We turn the library into our polling site,” said Curtis. “It is like an actual polling site. They have to sign their signature, present their IDs, and Mrs. Boykin will take their picture and give them a copy of their photo ID, and if they lose it when it is time to go vote, then we won’t let them vote.

“They get a real-life experience on what it is like to vote,” said Curtis. “We get a lot of good responses from the students. Each year they love voting. Normally, we let them create signs and posters and they will stand out for dismissal, and when the parents are in line, they see the signs reminding them to go vote.

“When they go home, we tell them to get their neighbors and family members to go vote,” said Curtis. “It really empowers them.”

Career Tech Teacher Crystal Boykin said the ballots come from the courthouse.

“The site, winmyvote.com, is the one that we used this year,” said Boykin. “In order to tailor our ballot for us, we gave this company copies of our ballots, and they were able to add in our candidates and amendments and they added in some national questions. From that, we went a week in advance with the content area in our social studies classes. We were able to talk about the amendments up for voting and what each race is for. Not a lot of local candidates put in content in terms of their platform, but we were able to at least verify the votes.

“Our students receive a link where they sign up and come in and see the actual ballot,” said Boykin. “We voted Monday through Friday last week.”

Each office had pictures to go along with the candidates’ names. The students would highlight a star that signified who the student voted for.

Aamir Hicks, a student at the School of Discovery said he enjoyed the mock voting process because it allowed each students’ voice to be heard.

After the results were tallied winning candidates including Kay Ivey was elected Governor by the students, Will Boyd was elected Lt. Governor, Heath Milam was elected Secretary of State, Joseph Siegelman was elected Attorney General, John McMillian was elected State Treasurer, Rick Pate won Agriculture Commissioner and Miranda Joseph won Auditor.