Cook County students get a crash course in elections before running the polls at their own schools

Some 150 students from two dozen high schools across Cook County aren’t just learning about elections in their civics classes. They’ll soon help run them.

Cook County Clerk Monica Gordon and her staff came to John Hersey High School in Arlington Heights Tuesday afternoon to train the first group of high school seniors who will serve as official election judges during a special on-campus early voting day in late February.

The training sessions continue Wednesday in Oak Forest for students in the South suburbs, under a pilot program partnership led by Gordon, public school districts and the Chicago Bears aimed at increasing civic participation among youth. They learn everything from how to check in voters to how to operate the voting equipment.

“What you’re taking part in today is not a simulation,” Gordon told the roomful of about 40 students from Northwest Suburban High School District 214 and Barrington Area Unit District 220. “It’s not a class exercise, and it’s not something that’s happening in any other school around the country. This is democracy in action.”

The 24 schools involved in Gordon’s “Defenders of DA’mocracy” program will serve as early voting polling places for students, faculty and staff for one day only — Feb. 26 — ahead of the March 17 gubernatorial primary election.

Students who are 18 — or will be by general election day Nov. 3 — will be able to participate. If they’re not yet registered to vote, they can do so that day with two forms of identification such as a student ID and a letter from the school, according to the clerk’s office.

The availability of the on-campus ballot boxes on Feb. 26 coincides with the start of early voting for suburban Cook County voters the same day at suburban courthouses, the Maywood Public Library and George W. Dunne Cook County Administration Building at 69 W. Washington St. in Chicago.

Early voting expands to 54 sites on March 3.

Gordon, who is tasked with managing elections in suburban Cook County, knows all too well the sobering statistics of low voter turnout among people aged 18-22:

For a presidential election, it’s less than 4%.

For a midterm, it’s 2%.

Municipal elections, even smaller: less than 1%.

Gordon hopes the pilot program helps increase those numbers, and says she’s committed to finding other ways to boost participation among young people.

“A passion of mine is democracy and voting and how important voting is, but I think what we need to do is increase civic engagement,” said Gordon, a Democrat from Chicago Heights who became clerk in December 2024. “And so how to increase civic engagement? We thought this was a cool idea. We want to start with the young people, right? The future of our democracy.”

Tom Smith, Hersey’s division head for social sciences and world languages, solicited students interested in becoming election judges from the AP American Government and Politics class. They won’t get class credit or service hours, but will be excused from their regular class schedule while they help work the polls inside the school’s faculty lounge, he said.

They’ll get standard pay from the county, too: $250.

District 214 Superintendent Scott Rowe — a former social studies teacher — praised students for attending the clerk’s two-hour training session on Tuesday, even though they don’t officially return from winter break until Wednesday.

“Opportunities like today allow students to move beyond textbooks and experience how these systems operate in real life,” Rowe said.