South Side Lower Elementary students learned the importance of voting when they held their own mock vote complete with picture ballots.

Promote the Vote coordinator Susan Spiers said the Secretary of State for Mississippi asked all the elementary schools to host the mock vote. Old technology provided a place to put their check mark on their ballots.

“We have two of the now obsolete voting machines the county donated to us,” Spiers said.

With assistance from the Civic Woman’s Club, who are also official poll workers, and some gifted students from the upper elementary, a mock election was held and the young children learned the importance of voting.

Ballots with pictures and names were provided by the secretary of state for the children to vote with, Spiers said. Before the students received their ballots, they had to follow the same procedures adults do. They had to sign in, collect their ballot, vote and then drop it off in the ballot box.

Every child in the school had a chance to vote, from kindergarten to second grade, Spiers said. Once all the ballots were collected the second grade math class counted the ballots to be posted on the Promote the Vote website along with all the others in the state, she said.

The results of the mock election for South Side Lower had Trent Lott leading as for the United States Senate with 114 votes, Erik Fleming with 75 votes and Harold Taylor with 36 votes. For the House of Representatives, Congressional District 4, Gene Taylor lead with 156 votes and Randy McDonnell followed with 61 votes.

State wide Lott lead the Senate race with 12,972, followed by Fleming with 8,872 and Harold Taylor with 2,254. In the House of Representatives race, Gene Taylor lead with 4,285 and McDonnell followed with 1,844, according to http://www.sos.state.ms.us/PTV/Results.asp.