Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the District 4 4-H trip To Washington D.C. to participate in Citizenship Washington Focus: Presidential Inauguration, scheduled for January, 2021, was cancelled. The purpose of this trip was to provide 4-H youth an opportunity to visit the capital and familiarize themselves with 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 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 again in the evening. The afternoon session included education on the electoral system including primaries, political parties, the electoral college and map, and a discussion of how 2020 was different due to all of the unusual circumstances.  At the end of that session, participants were 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, involved a discussion of media sources, and reviewed techniques for assessing media bias. Following the evening session, participants completed a post-test evaluation. Based on a comparison of the pre and post-test responses, on average, after participating in the event, youth:

• felt more comfortable discussing the election with other people.
• better understood how the Electoral College works.
• better knew 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.
• expressed they enjoyed learning about political topics.

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