By Grace Wyant
Ironwood City Reporter
Today, delegates of Arizona Girls State made their first foray into the elections that will fill the positions in their mythical city governments.
After making the decision as to who would sit on the city election board, delegates were introduced to the process of voting in the primary and general elections. This introduction will enable the delegates to go through the process of electing their mayor and city council members.
I got a chance to conduct a quick interview with Maddie Keller, who serves as Ironwood’s Judge 2 during our election.
What have you noticed as we prepared to conduct the vote over the course of the past 15 minutes?
So I kind of love that I can make sure everybody knows what they’re doing. You know, how to vote, if they’re nationalists or federalists, and what they do.
And then I got to vote first. Yeah. So that was cool. I just noticed that people are really getting involved.
Any division between nationalists and federalists?
I wouldn’t say too much, just right now, with the primary elections, you can only vote for your party. But we’ll probably see more after lunch.
Right before the party meetings, I conducted another interview with Ella Day from Mesquite City. Here’s what she had to say.
So, did you learn anything new about the process of elections in terms of city government?
I think I have a new appreciation for how many people it takes to keep this thing running.
How easy to understand would you say the process was?
It was pretty easy. I think our counselor explained it really well.
I would say by doing it, it explained a lot more than just describing.
My city opted to skip the speeches for the general election, because we thought we knew each other pretty well. How did that part of the campaign work, and do you think that affected how you voted at all?
We did know each other in general. But in my opinion, I feel like speeches would have helped to better know the candidates.
After just the first full day as delegates at Arizona Girls State, we have already taken in quite a bit of information about the civic process and voting. Over the week, this delegate believes we will observe an only increasing level of engagement and understanding.