This is why I found this project so important, I think that being able to vote for who you truly think will improve the country, not based on rumor but instead on fact, is an extremely patriotic thing to do. We started our education by answering a list of questions commonly asked to candidates on ISideWith.com, and discovered which candidate matched our ideals.
Educated/Respectful Voting
A core part of being an educated voter is sharing your opinion while respecting others, as Joanne said; "speak in an educated, informed and thoughtful manner." If you insult something another stands for, they might wholly disregard what your saying as bias, so you must both respect their standpoint, and prove yours, at the same time.
My ISideWith Is Below |
Part Two;
After all of this we split into groups, two per class, and then split into teams in those groups. Each group was assigned a candidate they would represent, and allowed to decide their own roles. The available roles were; One president, who would perform as the face of the team, leading them with the opening statement at debates as well as backing up the economy team. I performed this role as the candidate Jill Stein (my personal favorite), and can say in confidence that I not only enjoyed my time, but did well in her persona. One vice president, this person would perform the closing statements, assist their president in writing speeches (supplying facts, evidence, major critiques/changes) and back up the foreign policy team. One campaign manager, effectively the glue that held this project together, this persons job was to make sure everyone was doing work efficiently and getting it turned in on schedule (while also performing as backup for the social policy team). After these roles had been assigned (by popular vote within the groups;) the rest of the teams split into three sets of three to cover economy, foreign issues and social policy. Everyone was set to work making opening (or closing) statements for their topics, so they could transition into the freestyle round that would follow. After the speech prep. had finished we began to work on our "Truth Campaign Ads", short videos that would fact check our candidate on certain issues, later posted on YouTube. There were two debates: one for the presidents and vice presidents on the second while we hosted a voter info night (also presenting our videos), With the second being in front of the entire school, and including every person from all teams giving their statements.