In the recent mock election, LHS students’ election choices differed significantly from the national results.
The most prominent difference being the presidential election, the LHS mock election received 626 votes for the Harris-Walz campaign, while the Trump-Vance campaign received 243, out of a total of about 1000 participating voters.
“At LHS, students are pretty educated and aware of all the issues,” said junior Alexandra Grigore. “I feel like there’s definitely a difference in how progressive Oregon is as a state compared to some of the other states.”
The Constitutional Law class that ran the mock election said this was a great opportunity for all students to get the chance to see how voting works, even if they aren’t of voting age yet.
“Most of the school can’t actually vote, so it shows them how all of this works for when they eventually will be able to vote,” said junior Violet Lempert. “It also kind of gives an insight to how things are at our school and how people view politics here.”
LHS and the state agreed on other categories, though. Attorney General Dan Rayfield won with 64.7% of votes at LHS, and 53.6% of votes across the state.
The LHS US Representative 5th District winner, Janelle Bynum, won with 62.4% of votes, more than the state where she won with 47.6% of votes.
“People shouldn’t vote on things they don’t know about, because a lot of stuff can, look good on paper, but when you take a deeper look, there’s a lot of issues,” said senior Abby Dixon.
Measure 118 passed at LHS, but rejected at the state level. The Constitutional Law students believe this inconsistency is because there were issues students were not aware of.