CHARLO — Let’s clarify that headline before we join the Chicago Tribune’s cry of “Dewey defeats Truman” on history’s blooper reel. Last Friday, Mitt Romney and his Republican counterparts emerged victorious as Charlo students in grades six through twelve participated in a mock election intended to familiarize themselves with the voting process and the issues at stake in this election.

Though called a “mock” election, the exercise made use of real voting booths and real ballots, though ballot issues were decided on by the high schoolers, only.

Organization of the district-wide election was spearheaded by High School English teacher Keith Grebetz and Kasey Savage.

According to Grebetz, the purpose of holding the election was to teach students to be informed, knowledgeable voters. Grebetz said that eight members of the senior class will be voting in the official election on Nov. 6.

“We really did it for the seniors, because we have eight voting,” said Grebetz. “The overall purpose was to make them knowledgeable voters and not have the ballot intimidate them.”

In classes leading up to the event, Grebetz made it clear to his students that voting is more than just showing up to pull the lever on election day, as making educated decisions and critically examining the issues is an essential first step, and one that takes time and energy.

For Grebetz’ juniors and seniors, that entailed generating a list of the top 25 issues in the election and speaking impartially about those issues from the perspective of Romney and President Obama.

“Each student was assigned one issue from that candidate’s view and they did a presentation on it,” Grebetz said of the speeches covering everything from tax policy to stem cell research.

Besides the presidential election, classroom discussion touched on the other races rounding out “The Big Four” – President, U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, and Governor. After the last votes were cast, the tally revealed a sweep by Republican candidates (see results below), with Romney enjoying the largest victory by securing 70% of the popular vote, while 21% supported Obama.

According to Grebetz, the strong showing by Republicans across the ballot was not unexpected.

“(The results) are typical. Charlo is very conservative,” Grebetz said.

Despite Romney’s lopsided win, Grebetz reported that many students had trouble choosing between the candidates of the two major parties, while 9% opted for libertarian Gary Johnson.

“The key words for both Romney and Obama were ‘undesirables.’ (But, they) had to choose one which one (they) think is going to be the best,” said Grebetz.

In addition to “The Big Four” races facing Montanans this election cycle, Charlo students also cast votes for which past president they felt would be the best leader to bring back to run the country in the modern day. Abraham Lincoln won that ballot convincingly, a result Grebetz believed may have been partially influenced by Honest Abe’s recent portrayal in movies.

“I think part of that is that there have been a lot of movies about him,” Grebetz said. Meanwhile, Grebetz credited Teddy Roosevelt’s third-place finish with his reputation as “a Montana kind of guy.”

Grebetz reported that voting tendencies were nearly uniform across grade levels and gender. The results of key races are listed below: