Yearbook explains mock elections process

By Sarah Garrett,
Bluedevilhub.com Editor-In-Chief–

The end of the school year is just around the corner, and for the Davis High yearbook class, this means putting all the final touches on the yearbook. This includes creating and finalizing the mock elections section.

Organizing mock elections is a big task for the yearbook staff. They began the process at the beginning of the year, according to yearbook adviser David Achimore.

“At the beginning of the year we do a brainstorming session and I make sure to give feedback that I think the kids should hear,” Achimore said.

According to senior and yearbook member Amelia Ziegler, the staff looked through both old yearbooks and other schools’ yearbooks to help generate ideas for senior mock categories. Both the staff and Achimore vetoed certain ideas.

“We eliminated the [categories] that had negative connotations or could be misinterpreted.” Ziegler said, “like biggest flirt.”

After coming up with a long list of categories, the ballots were ready to be passed out to senior classes. This year, yearbook passed out the ballots to classes instead of setting up an online survey that not all students knew about or could vote for.

If students were absent the day ballots were passed out, there were other ways for their vote to be counted.

“I let students bring their ballots in to my classroom if they weren’t there or needed more time,” Achimore said. “I noticed those kids mostly voted for themselves, which I thought was pretty funny.”

Voting took place earlier this month, and by now all of the votes have been counted and the winners have been notified. The staff has also almost finished taking the photos of each elected pair, which will take up a large portion of the yearbook.

“We have like six pages of [senior mocks],” Ziegler said.

With the mock elections process almost complete and the deadline for yearbook submission rapidly approaching, senior and head of mock elections Maxine Zhao sees the importance of having a senior mock category in the yearbook.

“I think it’s just a really fun thing to have, and everyone likes them,” Zhao said. “When you look back in 10 years you can remember who was who and see how they’ve changed.”