Harrison High School Vice Principal Steve Lipski knows very well the importance of having a well-educated electorate. In the early part of the 2000s, he served aptly as a councilman in Jersey City’s Journal Square neighborhood.
He’s taken that interest with him to this side of the Passaic River, now, having invited the League of Women Voters, as well as members of the Hudson County Board of Elections office to Harrison to conduct an open mock election last week — as a way to show young people the importance of voting, being heard — and how to use these fairly new voting machines.
Now, this mock election wasn’t for anyone running on the ballot. Kids didn’t see Trump or Harris or anything remotely close to it. Instead, they were invited to vote on their favorite beach, whether they believed voting should take place on a Saturday, whether Election Day should be a national holiday and a few others.
And, for many students, getting to use the voting machines was an incredible experience, one they won’t forget. Oh, and even better — the kids who will be 18 by Election Day 2024 were given an opportunity to register to vote.
It was, to say the least, a tremendous day-long civics lesson for the teens at HHS.
Student participation
Harrison High School Senior Evelyn DaSilva was one of the students who took part in the day.
“When people my age think about voting, they think it’s hard to do; but it’s an eye opener to learn about the different, yet easy ways to register to vote,” she said. “The presenters were clearly passionate about this topic.”
Junior Mya DeJesus was pleased to learn how to vote.
“I now know how to register to vote and how to use the voting machine,” she said. “It’s cool to learn how to vote and get a sense of the future.”
We also spoke with Senior Rebecca Sardinha, who addressed several components of the day. The 18-year-old, who says she wants to study aviation, says the Election 2024 wasn’t on her mind until she became a senior.
“I definitely took an interest because now senior year started and I already had a talk with my mom since I turned 18,” she said. “She did tell me that now I have to vote. And I just thought it was funny because I don’t really know anything about it. Not even politics itself … But then this year I took the opportunity of taking an economics class. That’s where my teacher went a little further into the education of how it works and everything. And then this happened and I just found it interesting because I didn’t know anything about it until now. I just think it’s so important for me to learn now that I’m 18. I’m ready to do it.”
Sardinha is a four-sport athlete — she pays baseball, soccer, basketball and flag football at Harrison High School — and she says her generation is pretty apathetic toward voting — but she wants that to change.
“One thing I learned in this class is that the majority of my generation doesn’t vote and we have the biggest generation, which is interesting,”Sardinha said. “So I was just thinking that if everybody voted then, we would have a much bigger impact. So I think that’s an important thing to point out.
“I also think that it’s hard to make them see why it’s so important, because as a high school student, I didn’t really care about anything other than, like, getting my work done and playing sports. When senior year you hits, I think they start to understand the importance and see of everything. So, I have a bigger understanding and education involved and I would definitely try to bring them (my classmates) into voting.”
So as she approaches her very first vote, who will Sardinha be voting for in November?
“I’m still undecided about that,” she said.
Now it wasn’t just the young people who had things to say last week. Patricia Schmiedel, of the League of Women Voters, came to Harrison all the way from Mantoloking. The idea — energize young voters. And by the looks of things, she seeing great success, not just in Harrison.
“Now we’re getting hopefully 400 kids registered to vote and to understand how to vote and why it’s important to vote,” Schmiedel said. “The League of Women Voters is 100% nonpartisan. We worked for suffrage since our founding over 100 years ago and we are committed to empowering voters and defending democracy.”
Schmiedel says her hope is to engage with youngsters in the most underserved communities and counties in New Jersey.
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Kevin A. Canessa Jr. is the editor of and broadcaster at The Observer, an organization he has served since 2006. He is responsible for the editorial content of the newspaper and website, the production of the e-Newspaper, writing several stories per week (including the weekly editorial), conducting live broadcasts on social media channels such as YouTube, Facebook, and X, including a weekly recap of the news — and much more behind the scenes. Between 2006 and 2008, he introduced the newspaper to its first-ever blog — which included podcasts, audio and video. Originally from Jersey City, Kevin lived in Kearny until 2004, lived in Port St. Lucie. Florida, for four years until February 2016 and in March of that year, he moved back to Kearny to return to The Observer full time. Click Here to send Kevin an email.