Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the District 4 4-H Inauguration trip scheduled for January 2021 was cancelled. The purpose of this trip was to provide 4-H youth an opportunity to visit Washington D.C. and familiarize themselves with not only our nation’s capital, but also everything that accompanies the presidential election and inauguration process. After the trip was cancelled, District 4 4-H agents felt strongly that providing civic and government educational opportunities were still extremely valuable to these youth.

Youth who registered to attend the inauguration were polled on their interest in additional educational opportunities. Reviewing the polling results, District 4 4-H agents planned an educational experience on Election Day, November 3^rd, 2020. Upon registering and signing a code of conduct, participants completed a pre-test. On election day, participants met via Zoom twice – once in the afternoon and then once in the evening. The afternoon session included education on the electoral system including primaries, political parties, the electoral college and map; a discussion of how 2020 was different due to all of the unusual circumstances; and the session ended with the participants being tasked with recording four election-focused headlines from four different news sources at different times during the evening. The evening session focused on reviewing those media headlines and involved a discussion of media sources and how to handle media bias. Following the evening session, participants completed a post-test evaluation.

Based on a comparison of the pre and post-test responses, after participation in the event participants on average:

• felt more comfortable discussing the election with other people
• better understood how the Electoral College works
• better understood the difference between absentee, in-person and mail-in voting
• could better identify different types of media sources
• felt more comfortable disagreeing with someone in a respectful manner
• and expressed they enjoyed learning about political topics.

While this opportunity was certainly nowhere close to the experience of attending the Presidential Inauguration in person, this experience allowed for 4-H youth to explore civics and politics in a safe, fun and educational manner.