Mount Si High School students will have the chance to learn about the electoral process through a mock election scheduled for Friday, Oct. 31, when each second period class will vote for United States president and Washington state governor.

Students in Kim Sales’s Criminal Justice class and Lisa Truemper’s Contemporary Issues course will be trained as “official elections workers,” and will administer the balloting process, the teachers said.

The votes will be tallied over the weekend, and announced Monday, Nov. 3 — the day before the national election.

To foster understanding of the American process, and also to integrate math concepts, results will be tabulated both by popular vote and by a “pseudo-electoral college” for each second period class. Each will be mapped as a “red class” or “blue class,” the way the states are regarded by pollsters. Students will also look at gender- and grade-specific results.

Sales and Truemper came up with the idea of a mock election independently, and decided to work together to give all students an important lesson in civics.

“We want to emphasize the voting process,” Truemper said. “How do you vote? How do you become informed?”

She hopes students will carry new lessons with them when they reach voting age. Traditionally, not many Americans aged 18 to 25 make it to the polls.

“They don’t have to be the lowest turnout group,” Truemper said. “They’re smart enough to vote, but they don’t know how to do it.”

Also promoting excitement about the elections, the Associated Student Body invites students to watch Nov. 4 election coverage in the school’s “community living room,” where it will be shown on two big screens — one tuned to a “liberal” network, the other to a more “conservative” one.