Students casting mock ballots on Tuesday
Posted May 12, 2013 8:43 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Thousands of British Columbia school children are expected to cast fake ballots in a parallel election running alongside the real one on Tuesday.
Taylor Gunn, chief electoral officer and founder of the student vote program, says he hopes to collect 100,000 ballots from students in hundreds of schools across the province on Monday.
He’s conducted 19 mock elections over the past 10 years and collected more than three million ballots across Canada.
Gunn says he hopes the junior voting helps to develop politically engaged citizens and foster political dialogue between parents and their children.
He’ll also be paying close attention to Tuesday’s election to see if students continue the trend of ignoring their parents’ voting behaviours.
While actual voters in BC elected Liberal governments in 2005 and 2009, kids across the province favoured the NDP on both occasions.
