For the first time since the 2016 election, Calabasas High School is holding a mock election on campus for the 2024 election year. The head of the social studies department, Bradley Boelman, worked with club board members of Empower the Vote to guide new voters through their first election with a practice round.
However, this mock election on campus is not specific to Calabasas High School. The secretary of state is tasked with a youth outreach program, and part of that is the mock election. Every high school, public or private, participates can participate in this.
“It’s really fun for the sake of just having kids participate in something civic oriented, but also from my standpoint, as the Capstone teacher, we could analyze that data. We could take a deeper look into what’s going on,” said Boelman.
Within the election at CHS, Boelman played a communicative role, receiving the information from the state, but the students were the ones who really worked to make it happen.
“Gabrielle Eggers and Tomer Fine especially worked really hard to get this off the ground,” said Boelman.
Eggers and Fine got different social studies teachers to make a Google Classroom post with the link to a Google Form, where the election format was pasted, and students could become familiar with the ballot and certain propositions before the official election.
“Essentially, our goal is to inform the voters, and especially kids who are 18, to know what’s on the ballot, and get them prepared for the election on November 5,” said Eggers.
Due to the large sample size, this data will also be offered to the AP research students if they want to use any of it for their research. It will be anonymous, and Boelman knew people would be concerned about this aspect of anonymity.
“Students that are concerned about their vote being exposed, we are not collecting emails. We don’t care how people vote. We just want to encourage people to be part of the process,” said Boelman.
The election is on November 5, and the new voters of CHS will hopefully be more prepared after using this resource and practicing voting.
