Each presidential election cycle, the social studies teachers have a tradition of assigning an interactive mock election project.
The “Perfect Presidents Project” allows students to create their ideal candidate and have other students vote between them.
The “candidates” are AI generated images of people with fake names and political views provided by what the student themselves think would be the best fit for president.
For this year’s perfect presidential elections, junior Meagan Petersen and senior Brendan Sidzyik created the finalists, Pollie Tician and Carlos Hernandez.
Sidzyik says the process was really simple: “You make a candidate, and if you get enough votes then you move onto the next round. If you win the next round, then you continue through the rounds until it comes down to two candidates.”
This year, while students vote in the mock election that the school held for the real candidates, voters also were able to vote for Pollie Tician and Carlos Hernandez.
Petersen said, “People are likely voting based on which candidate best aligns with their beliefs, so making your candidate’s policies as neutral as possible is the key to getting votes. In politics, this process is called triangulation.”
This year has been different than most elections, with one of the candidates dropping out mid-race. The last time that happened was in 1968, when President Lyndon B. Johnson dropped out seven months before the election.
This time around, President Joe Biden ended his re-elections bid on July 21, 2024, leaving only about four months for Vice President Kamala Harris to make her campaign for president.
When it comes to teaching students about such controversial topics, AP Government teacher Mr. Raymond Keller said the best thing he could do was “ be really careful.”
“I follow our curriculum guide that’s put forward by our school district in which I’m teaching students about the Constitution,” Keller explaind. :We’re talking about the foundations of the government, we’re talking about how presidents are elected, we’re talking about how laws are made. It’s not really a debate class.”
AP Government teacher Ms. Erika Lewis said the project “underscores the importance of teaching students to be good consumers of media and where they get their information from.”
Voting for the final fictional candidates in the Perfect President project, as well as the real candidates – for president, Senate, and House of Representatives – on the official 2024 ballot, took place Monday and Tuesday in the school library, giving students who might not be able to vote yet a realistic experience.
