2016 Mock Presidential Election
Project Details
Inspirations
The inspirations for this project had sprung from questions that have been integral to the United States as a whole: What does it mean to be patriotic? How can we be educated, active voters and do our civic duty? How can we stand for our opinions in an educated thoughtful manner? We formed a project for our Humanities classes to explore these questions, and the Mock Election was the result. For more information, go to the URL below.
http://jsith3.wixsite.com/hthiamericanhistory/2016-presidential-election
Starting Out
Before any actual candidates were assigned, we first were participants in the "Dear Future President Letter" raffle organized by KPBS, in which both middle and high schools submitted up to 500 word letters to the future president. The outline, my drafts, and my final letter can be found here.
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/0B9XTkTXxY0FmMzluZkp1bW8wLVU
The Comprised Work
The next step from writing a letter to the next president was to research the candidate for one, and that's just what we did. All of our Humanities classes split into four groups, each assigned a project role and candidate. Our groups researched topics such as economic policies and trade agreements, and were required and encouraged to fact-check every bit of information that we had found. From that information, we wrote drafts of our initial opening statements for the candidates' debate, and moved on to making our Truth Campaign Advertisement. Making the video was simple enough; we needed our initial fact-checked information to comprise a group collection of info, then created a storyboard for the video to be coherent and entertaining. The rest of our work consisted of perfecting our drafts and prepping for the candidate's debate. For more information and to view my work, please use the URL below.
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/0B9XTkTXxY0FmNXNKei0tWVNnQ3M
Exhibition
At the first exhibition, we displayed our Truth Campaign ads and gave summaries of our candidates' stances, in addition to a mock debate between our presidential candidates. The second exhibition was a debate performed in front of the school. Each topic that was researched was debated by the field experts, and was ended after the vice president and presidential candidates debated. I believe that they went well and were well received; even freshmen were talking excitidly There are no photos of the second exhibition, sadly.
Reflection
I have learned that an educated voter is one who puts in the time and work to find out the truth of a presidential candidate, and was definitely the most challenging part of this project. My candidate, Gary Johnson, had much less content to sift through than the two main candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and so finding statements and information to fact check was much more difficult. But after due diligence and many pages of Google, I was able to find enough information to fact-check him. Beyond simple work though, I have gleaned the nature of American politics, both in my opinion and on an academic level. Politics are most of the time cut-and-dry, dull affairs, but when election season comes along life is breathed into it; tensions begin to run, rivalry becomes commonplace, and people are bombarded by campaign ads either vilifying or sanctifying candidates. And underneath the spirited surface lies the information on the candidates that is crucial to educated voters, and it is that that people should be looking for, not rallies or speeches, but the concrete facts beneath. That doesn't mean you can't have hopes for the outcomes though; you can certainly wish or pray for any candidate you choose, that's our democracy after all. In the current state of our elections, I can only hope that a competent, tactful and decent president is elected, so that our country can hold true to being the greatest nation on Earth.
The inspirations for this project had sprung from questions that have been integral to the United States as a whole: What does it mean to be patriotic? How can we be educated, active voters and do our civic duty? How can we stand for our opinions in an educated thoughtful manner? We formed a project for our Humanities classes to explore these questions, and the Mock Election was the result. For more information, go to the URL below.
http://jsith3.wixsite.com/hthiamericanhistory/2016-presidential-election
Starting Out
Before any actual candidates were assigned, we first were participants in the "Dear Future President Letter" raffle organized by KPBS, in which both middle and high schools submitted up to 500 word letters to the future president. The outline, my drafts, and my final letter can be found here.
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/0B9XTkTXxY0FmMzluZkp1bW8wLVU
The Comprised Work
The next step from writing a letter to the next president was to research the candidate for one, and that's just what we did. All of our Humanities classes split into four groups, each assigned a project role and candidate. Our groups researched topics such as economic policies and trade agreements, and were required and encouraged to fact-check every bit of information that we had found. From that information, we wrote drafts of our initial opening statements for the candidates' debate, and moved on to making our Truth Campaign Advertisement. Making the video was simple enough; we needed our initial fact-checked information to comprise a group collection of info, then created a storyboard for the video to be coherent and entertaining. The rest of our work consisted of perfecting our drafts and prepping for the candidate's debate. For more information and to view my work, please use the URL below.
https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/0B9XTkTXxY0FmNXNKei0tWVNnQ3M
Exhibition
At the first exhibition, we displayed our Truth Campaign ads and gave summaries of our candidates' stances, in addition to a mock debate between our presidential candidates. The second exhibition was a debate performed in front of the school. Each topic that was researched was debated by the field experts, and was ended after the vice president and presidential candidates debated. I believe that they went well and were well received; even freshmen were talking excitidly There are no photos of the second exhibition, sadly.
Reflection
I have learned that an educated voter is one who puts in the time and work to find out the truth of a presidential candidate, and was definitely the most challenging part of this project. My candidate, Gary Johnson, had much less content to sift through than the two main candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and so finding statements and information to fact check was much more difficult. But after due diligence and many pages of Google, I was able to find enough information to fact-check him. Beyond simple work though, I have gleaned the nature of American politics, both in my opinion and on an academic level. Politics are most of the time cut-and-dry, dull affairs, but when election season comes along life is breathed into it; tensions begin to run, rivalry becomes commonplace, and people are bombarded by campaign ads either vilifying or sanctifying candidates. And underneath the spirited surface lies the information on the candidates that is crucial to educated voters, and it is that that people should be looking for, not rallies or speeches, but the concrete facts beneath. That doesn't mean you can't have hopes for the outcomes though; you can certainly wish or pray for any candidate you choose, that's our democracy after all. In the current state of our elections, I can only hope that a competent, tactful and decent president is elected, so that our country can hold true to being the greatest nation on Earth.