About the Election Project
The Election Project was a project we did my junior year. The intentions behind this project were to better educate voters and next generation voters about the candidates and really expose them to doing their own research on presidential candidates. To create a deeper understanding and obtain more knowledge about the voting system and election. To know the how vital it is to fact check. And to be able to work in a campaign team. For the project we used the four candidates for the 2016 Presidential debate. These include, Gary Johnson, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Jill Stein. In addition to these main candidates each one got a campaign team that was split off into four groups, These were a foreign policy group, social group, environmental group, and economic group. The project I participated in was the open debate between all the candidates and their campaigns groups.
My Project Process
My job in this project was to be the mediator. My work was surrounded around doing research on each of the campaign topics and creating interesting questions for them. As the mediator I created a series of questions that I asked each of the campaigns. These questions were designed specifically for each topic they had. For the open debate I along with my teacher Joanne ran the debate. Below are the questions I designed and the format of the debate.
My Self Reflection
I learned so much during this project. First of all I learned so much more about politics and what it really means to be the president of the United States. When I was younger I never really cared about the president or congress or any of it. And I think that is something that should be concerning because I feel if I hadn't researched so much for this project about the candidates, their positions, their values, and who they are I do not think I would have ever taken the time to have done that. That is why I feel this project was so important and vital for all the next generation voters. And that was truly what we wanted to come out of the project. We wanted to expose people to the truth. Being educated to me means, doing the work. Not just voting for Clinton because my family is democrat but because she aligns with what I want in a president. For me it means independence and and confidence in what I believe in. The project was very challenging foe me over all, I tend to procrastinate a lot and I had just transferred back to High Tech High in the middle of the project, so really getting into it was a challenge for me. I really pushed myself to not let people or electronics distract me from my work. And I made sure to work somewhere I was able to get my work done in. I have as I said before learned so much from this project. I not only created my own personal views on the candidates but I also learned about the things that have been happening in our county, the wage gap, ISIS, education policies. Things that have been a constant issue in our society but I never paired much attention to. Currently I am not happy with the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. I feel fear, uncertainty, disappointment. But I also feel hope. I feel that this will be a learning curve and that hopefully people will recognize that the election of a president is not based on what party you support or who says what they want, but who will lead America into a bright future.