The results are in at Ellis Middle School.

Over the past several days, Ellis Middle School students voted on several of the key elections voters will be deciding on next Tuesday, in many ways reflecting the same sort of experiences as registered voters.

“It was hard because there was so many (candidates) and I didn’t know much about them,” said seventh-grader Dylan Underdahl.

There were about 810 votes total out of the entire school, as mock elections mirrored real life in that some students were absent, some students didn’t fill in their vote and some ballots were spoiled.

The students of Ellis have Tom Stiehm over Marian Clennon, 382-359, for Mayor. Jeff Ellis prevailed over Terese Amazi 373-351 in the Sheriff’s race.

GOP candidate Tom Emmer narrowly beat out DFL candidate Mark Dayton 244-224 in the governor’s race, with the Independent Party’s Tom Horner coming in at 105 votes. Jeanne Poppe crushed Jennifer Gumbel at the student polls 476-285 for state representative of District 27B. Finally, incumbent Dan Sparks won a commanding victory over Austin Public School Board member Kathy Green 482-289 to retain his state senate seat.

According to Michael Veldman, sixth grade social studies teacher, Ellis Middle Schoolers have voted in mock elections for the past 14 years. This year, sixth graders were able to have retired teachers as election judges, some of whom will actually serve as election judges next Tuesday. Otherwise, seventh and eighth grade teachers generally acted as election judge for their respective classes.

This year’s mock election was organized by middle school teachers Derek Gustafson, Eric Vaughn, Pete Walker, Lisa Glynn, Cheryl Dunlap and Michael Veldman. Social studies teachers have spent the past couple of weeks preparing students for the elections, giving presentations and lessons in class. To get them prepared, teachers told students to bring in newspapers and campaign pamphlets and post them where other students could read them and figure out who to vote for.

Students went through many of the same motions registered voters go through before voting, such as filling out voter registration cards and bringing their student IDs with them.

“You felt like a grown-up” said Mariela Reyes.

Common knowledge holds that students tend to be influenced by their parents’ political views whenever they hold mock elections such as this, something several students confirmed when discussing how they chose to vote.

“Some of our parents only vote Democrat or Republican,” said seventh-grader Tori Hepler. “So it was kind of hard to understand which one to vote for.” Hepler said she voted the same as her parents would vote.

Veldman agrees parent or guardian influence could reflect in the student votes. However, like actual elections, campaign advertising and name and face recognition could play a part in influencing votes too.

For example, Amazi has visited seventh and eighth graders before during Ellis’s Freedom Week. When breaking down the votes for the Sheriff’s race, seventh and eighth graders have Amazi over Ellis, 128-101 in seventh grade and 127-113 in eighth. Teachers think sixth graders may have voted overwhelmingly for Ellis, 159-96, over Amazi simply because his last name is the same as the school’s.

Regardless, students seemed happy and excited to be a part of the political process, ready for their vote to actually count once they come of age.

“It was pretty fun to try and see what it was like to vote,” said Jelani Ann Khongsavanh.