Voting isn’t just for adults, as students throughout Pasco County learned Friday.
For the seventh-graders at Charles S. Rushe Middle School, mock elections are a chance to learn how to take part in U.S. government. Teachers told students the voting process begins with research.
“It's been a whole lot of preparing, like searching the different political parties and the candidates,” said seventh-grader Drew Burgess.
After the research, students went to handmade, cardboard polls to cast their ballots. Some of the students were passionate about their candidates.
“I want who I want to be governor,” student Jack Sturgess said.
With each check of a box, it instills the sense of how important their voices really are.
“It shows me that it is my opinion and that I can help the government with my opinion and that my opinion does count,” student Elizabeth Collier said.
For some students it isn’t just a mock election, as there are 332 first-time eligible voters in the county.
But for the 7th grade class, their first time voting will be in 2020, which will be a presidential election. Some of the students are already looking forward to being able to vote.
“I’m definitely going to be at the polls,” said Collier.
“It does make me want to vote because I know that my vote will count,” said Sturgess.
For a lot of these future voters it’s not just them learning how to vote. Many said they are taking their knowledge home to get their loved ones who can vote to vote today.
All the votes from the Pasco County School District will be counted and posted on Election Night.