Piedmont Students Vote For The Next President

All lined up and ready to go, third graders at Northwood elementary have spent the past few days learning the ins and outs of this year's election. A few dozen of the entire school’s worth of students set to vote in Piedmont on Tuesday.

They're a part of a nationwide program aimed at getting kids excited about voting now so that they'll be more likely to vote for real, even if this year's the candidates are the least liked in history.

“Normally we would try to steer away from who the candidates are and try and focus on why voting is important and the process itself,” second grade teacher Jessica Kayser said.

The voters were a mixed bunch. Some leaned Trump, and while reporters were at the mock election, Trump was winning by a wide margin.

“I voted for him because I don't really want Hillary Clinton to be president,” Lauren Moser, 9, said.

“My parents are voting for him, so I guess I would,” third grader Grayson Flurry said.

Others voted for Clinton to vote against Trump.

“Because he's mean,” Ian Mitchell, 10, said about Trump.

“I voted for Hillary Clinton. I know I didn't want Donald Trump to be president. Because he’s racist,” Jayden Fuston, 9, said.

There were even a few protest votes. Like 9-year-old Makinlee Selph who voted for the Green Party's Jill Stein because she still wants a woman president, just not Clinton.

“I think it would be cool to have a girl president because there's always first ladies, but there's never presidents that are girls,” she said.

Selph also said she thinks she wants to be president one day to “protect the endangered species and make more habitats for them.”

And then there were some who blocked the whole experience out; the choices were just too unsavory.

“Uh, I forgot,” 9-year-old Teague Witt said when asked who he voted for,

But the importance isn't lost on them, each getting a sticker with a thank you for their service, that even if it's fake still means something

“They serve our country by voting and they try to elect the president that they want,” Mitchell said while handing out stickers.