Elementary students who voted in a mock civic election at Holy Trinity School in Olds, voted quite differently than adults who were able to vote in the official thing, held at the Legion on Oct. 16.
The students gave the most votes, 24, to Mary Anne Overwater, as their adult counterparts, did.
But that's where the similarities in vote tallies end.
Following are the other Holy Trinity vote tallies:
Wade Bearchell, 15; Debbie Bennett, 14; Keith Bishop,16; Wanda Blatz, 6; Gordon Bueckert, 10; Matthew Cadrain, 11; Rudy Durieux, 18; Mary Jane Harper, 12; Heather Ryan, 8; Ron Stade, 6; David Terry, 13; and Harvey Walsh, 8.
In the actual municipal election, Overwater led the polls with 995 votes. New councillor Wanda Blatz finished second with 978. Incumbent Wade Bearchell came third with 963. Mary Jane Harper, also an incumbent, placed fourth with 866 and fellow incumbent Debbie Bennett placed fifth with 780. New councillor Heather Ryan took the sixth and last seat with 757.
Two incumbent councillors were not elected. Harvey Walsh finished seventh, with 745 votes and Rudy Durieux placed eighth with 727.
Among the remaining hopefuls, Keith Bishop finished in ninth place, garnering 725 votes. Gordon Bueckert placed 10th with 499, Ron Stade ended up in 11th place with 393, David Terry placed 12th with 310 and Matthew Cadrain finished last with 199.
Holy Trinity School was the lone Olds school to be involved in the mock vote, organized by CIVIX, an education charity.
Social studies and humanities teacher Laura McDonald coordinated the vote.
The Albertan asked her if the students had shared their reasons for voting the way they did.
They did not; at least, not as of last week, although she said that may happen later. McDonald said they researched all 13 candidates and where they stand on various issues by watching a video of the Oct. 3 election forum, reading about them online, and by reading short bios of each candidate printed in the Albertan.
"They kind of looked at what they could offer the community and the services that they already were offering the community -- like the line of work they were doing, things like that," she said.
McDonald was intrigued by the fact that Overwater topped the student poll and the actual polls.
"It was an overwhelming majority, I found, for her," she said.
She was also interested in the fact that Durieux was not elected in the official election but did well among the students.
Overwater and Durieux came into the school and talked to the students, but McDonald notes that occurred on Oct. 13, the day after the students voted, so there was no correlation with their vote counts.
"The reason I kind of had it like that was so that it wouldn't sway (them)," she said. "We really did appreciate them taking the time to come in to the school. That was great."
On Oct. 17, the day after the civic election, students did react to the official results, McDonald says.
"They were quite happy that Mary Anne Overwater was in. They were surprised that Rudy wasn't in," she said.
"They were quite happy that Mary Anne Overwater was in. They were surprised that Rudy wasn't in." LAURA McDONALDHOLY TRINITY CATHOLIC SCHOOL TEACHER
