DEMOCRACY IN ACTION AT GRASSO |
On October 29, the Grasso Technical High School community participated in the National Student/Parent Mock Election. The National Student/Parent Mock Election makes students and parents aware of the power of their ballot by actively involving them in a full-fledged campaign and national election. In 2004, the last presidential election year, over 4 million students, parents and teachers participated in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and 14 countries/territories around the world where Americans have schools. Over 40 million have participated since the project began.—National Mock Election As part of voter education, Mrs. Granatosky’s Sophomore Civics students conducted an issues poll at school and at home to familiarize themselves with what is important to our community. The results were compiled and graphed in the Math and Language Labs. Students then chose an election issue and researched the two major party candidates’ positions. Posters and papers comparing and contrasting stances were created and presented to classmates for their consideration. Students then created an issues chart comparing John McCain and Barack Obama. Mrs. Granatosky’s Honors Civics class managed the actual voting process. Elijah Baatz; Salvatore Gramolini; Alissa Taylor; Richard Colmenares; William Gregory; Le Keisha Taylor; Sara Duarte; David Jensen; Veronica Vasquez; Ibrahim Elahi; Cameron Muller; Jeremy Violette; Joseph Fahrenholtz; Caleb Sapia; Britton Wilson. All students acted as moderators—greeting and directing voters, poll checking, distributing ballots and monitoring poll stations. They also tallied the results, counting (and re-counting) the paper ballots. Barack Obama 342 John McCain 111 Ralph Nader 34 Once the totals were compiled, they were phoned into Hartford who then relayed them along with all other votes from Connecticut to the national headquarters. Results of the national mock election are available at |