Thanks to democracyLIVE! 2008, high school students all over the county are getting ready to witness, well, democracy live on Election Day.
About four hundred of them have signed up for the program, which provides students who are at least 16 years old the opportunity to be poll workers on Election Day. They represent 23 public and private schools – nearly all in the county.
In trainings after school, they’ve been learning how to set up, take down and operate eSlates, the county’s electronic voting machines. Of course, being the millenials that they are, they actually need little instruction on anything remotely technical.
Such was the case last week at Menlo-Atherton High School, where a two-hour training class of a dozen students had little trouble setting up eSlates and casting votes on them in a mock election of dead presidents. John Adams seemed to be the favorite, followed by the students’ Write-Ins of each other.
Utterances of “this is so cool!” and “I want to vote again!” were frequent.
But there was plenty of serious sit-at-your-desk instruction too, with Cynthia Greer from the Elections Office explaining the party-driven nature of primaries. She broke down critical Election Day procedures like checking in voters using the street index and roster, and offered quick lessons in how to best provide assistance.
