PEI students to cast ballots in provincial Student Vote campaign

Even though they are under the voting age, more than 6,000 elementary, intermediate and high school students from throughout Prince Edward Island will have an opportunity to consider the future direction of the province and vote for the official candidates running in the general election.

Students will also cast ballots on the electoral reform referendum, after learning about both sides of the referendum question. 

Student Vote is an authentic learning experience that enables teachers to bring democracy alive in the classroom, and empowers students to learn about government and the electoral process, and debate important issues facing the province.

This year’s program included a focus on developing news literacy skills in the digital age. The integration of NewsWise resources, encouraged students to learn how to fact-check online information, assess the credibility of sources and become more critical consumers of information.

A total of 48 schools have registered to participate in Student Vote PEI 2019, representing 26 of 27 provincial electoral districts. A map of participating schools is available here.

On or before April 23, students will take on the roles of election officials and coordinate the voting process for their peers. CIVIX will tabulate the results and release them publicly following the close of polls on Tuesday, April 23 (7:00 pm).

The Student Vote project for the 2019 Prince Edward Island provincial election was made possible by Elections PEI and the Government of Canada.

BACKGROUND:

Student Vote is the flagship program of CIVIX, a national civic education charity focused on developing the habits of active and informed citizenship among young people. Since 2003, CIVIX has coordinated 43 Student Vote projects at various levels of elections.

Other CIVIX programming includes government budget consultations with youth (Student Budget Consultation), coordinated visits between students and their elected representatives (Rep Day), a news literacy program for students (NewsWise) and professional development opportunities for teachers (Democracy Bootcamp).

Posted in English, Student Vote |

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.