New Jersey Students Chart Course for Democracy with Mapline

Students to weigh in on General Assembly races in mock election

New Jersey (October 10, 2019) – Thousands of students from grades 5-12 all across New Jersey are participating in a mock election, generating a wealth of data on student political opinion. The past years have seen a grand total of over 100,000 votes cast by students across hundreds of schools.

“We live in a partisan age, when the Internet makes materials based on political opinion readily available to students,” explained Robert O’Dell, Associate Director for the NJ Center for Civic Education. “It is the goal of the mock election to help provide students with the intellectual tools necessary to locate, evaluate, and utilize data and information on their own in order to become informed citizens.”

Students will weigh in on the New Jersey general assembly seats, as well as four “yes or no” issue questions: whether the Electoral College should be abolished in favor of a direct popular vote, online voting should be made available in New Jersey, voting should be mandatory and whether New Jersey’s primaries should implement a system of ranked voting.

After the votes are in, a team from Mapline, who create visual experiences from complex analysis, will power maps that will plot a variety of different data for students and educators.

“We’re excited to work with the students and educators of New Jersey to bring their opinions to life and help them participate in the democratic process,” said Brady Anderson, Mapline’s founder. “Our mapping tools will allow students to interactively break down results, gaining a better understanding of the electoral process. This is a very rewarding project to work on.”

Over 50 maps will be available as PDF downloads representing combinations of overarching variables: candidate, issue and grade level. Mapline’s segment and territory features will allow for color coding to easily differentiate votes.

In addition to the PDF maps, Mapline is also providing four aggregated maps to be embedded in the site that students and teachers can manipulate. These live, interactive maps will represent voting results across all grades by Congressional District. A map will be dedicated to each candidate and issue variable.

Students and teachers can zoom in and out on these maps and can perform searches for specific cities or addresses to narrow down the data.

This year’s mock election is supported by The Alice Paul Institute, NJ Women Vote, and the New Jersey Historical Commission.

To learn more about the mock election and see the results as they become available, visit njmockelection.org.

About Mapline

Mapline develops tools to transform analysis into a visual experience. Its mapping technology is one of the most powerful ways to visualize data from Excel spreadsheets to optimize logistics, enhance market planning, identify growth opportunities, or mitigate market risks. Mapline leads in data simplification and presentation and is committed to delivering the tools businesses need to outpace competition. To learn more, visit mapline.com.

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