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UPPER FREEHOLD: ‘Stone Bridge Nation’ rallies

Students learn about the Electoral College at convention

By Joanne Degnan, Managing Editor
   UPPER FREEHOLD — Who knew that learning about the role of the Electoral College in a presidential election could be so electrifying?
   As Miley Cyrus’ hit song “Party in the USA” rocked the auditorium, 543 fired-up students — many wearing patriotic face paint and small American flags in their pony tails — bopped down the aisles to take their seats at the first Stone Bridge Middle School Convention on Friday. The ear-splitting enthusiasm was palpable as the cheering students waved colorful homeroom campaign banners and hoisted aloft red, white and navy blue paper plates fixed to the end of classroom yardsticks.
   Eighth-grade teacher Judi Hoffman, one of the event’s co-organizers, was quick to clarify to the media that this mock political convention in the “Country of Stone Bridge” was neither a Republican nor Democratic affair.
   ”All party animals are welcome,” Ms. Hoffman shouted cheerfully over the roar of the crowd and Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.”
   Students at this convention weren’t nominating presidential candidates — Democrats and Republicans had already taken care of that in Charlotte and Tampa. This high-spirited pep rally was instead an opportunity for hands-on learning about the role of the Electoral College in choosing the next president.
   As every Stone Bridge fifth-grader now knows, Americans don’t vote directly for their president; they cast ballots for a slate of electors who vote at the Electoral College. Presidential candidates that win the popular vote, but don’t secure the required 270 Electoral College votes, actually lose elections — as has occurred three times in U.S. history (1876, 1888 and 2000).
   At the Stone Bridge gathering, the students had convened to root for teachers vying for the plumb “state assignments” — meaning those with the most electoral votes — and it was clear students grasped the strategy involved. Would their teacher pick the California card with 55 electoral votes and put her class in a position to affect the outcome of Stone Bridge’s mock presidential election in November? Or would she pick sparsely populated Montana with only three electoral votes?
   ”Everyone wants their teacher to get California,” said teacher Dee Burek, one of the co-organizers of the Stone Bridge convention. “Washington, D.C.? Not so much,” she said, noting the District of Columbia has only three electoral votes.
   Teacher Jackie Schappell, a co-organizer of the event, served as the master of ceremonies, calling each teacher to the stage to blindly pick a card to find out the state their homeroom class will represent in the Electoral College.
   ”Mr. Reed picks Iowa, Mrs. Richards the Badger State, Wisconsin…” Mrs. Schappell announced as the students in their homerooms roared in support.
   Moments later the cheers reached a crescendo when sixth-grade teacher Jamie Taylor picked the biggest prize in the Electoral College sweepstakes.
   ”Hold onto your seats! Miss Taylor has picked California!” Mrs. Schappell shouted as Jamie Taylor’s students began jumping and screaming as if she had just scored the winning touchdown at the Super Bowl.
   Although a few students had slunk into their chairs with their hands over the ears at this point, most were clearly having a good time.
   ”All the noise is what makes it so much fun,” said fifth-grader Marco Airo, of Allentown, whose homeroom is assigned Maryland in the Electoral College.
   In November, Stone Bridge Middle School students will have the opportunity to do something few citizens can do on Election Day — at least without ending up in jail. Stone Bridge students will actually be voting for president twice.
   On Nov. 1, Stone Bridge students will cast votes for either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney via computer in the My Voice National Student Mock Election, a nationwide event open to all American schools that involves more than 5 million students. This electronic balloting project, an initiative of the nonprofit Pearson Foundation, is being billed as the world’s largest mock national election.
   The next day, Stone Bridge will hold its own mock presidential election with paper ballots. This time, votes will be tabulated by homeroom, mirroring the way national presidential balloting is tallied on state-by-state basis. In each homeroom/state, the candidate who wins the popular vote then receives all of that homeroom/state’s electoral votes.
   The exercise will demonstrate how a candidate can win the most votes in the school, but still lose the mock election because of how electoral votes are calculated on a winner-take-all basis in every homeroom/states except Nebraska and Maine. (Those states use an alternative method to distributing their electoral votes).
   ”Anything can happen,” Mrs. Burek said.