Sunset Hill third-grader Toria Hall looks over her choices from behind a folder as she and her classmates participate in the Kids Voting initiative, Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2014 at the school. Students at Lawrence public schools participated in the vote, which seeks to educate children on the electoral process.

Lawrence’s youngest citizens may not be old enough to legally vote in next month’s elections, but they’ll still have a chance to cast their ballots come Nov. 8.

On Election Day, the Boys & Girls Club of Lawrence will host pint-sized “polling stations” at its 14 elementary school sites across the Lawrence school district, where kids will be able to “vote” for their preferred presidential, vice presidential and congressional candidates.

Their votes, just like those of the grownups in their lives, will be counted — and the results announced — at the end of the day by project volunteers, many of them local high school students.

“We just want kids to have the opportunity to know what the voting experience is like,” said Alissa Bauer, director of marketing and communications at the Boys & Girls Club. “Being a good citizen and an active member of your community — that is so much of what we’re trying to create here.”

The program, once known as Kids Voting and rebranded this year as Voting for Great Futures — Kids Vote 2016 by the Boys & Girls Club, has been a local mainstay since 1992, when Lawrence was one of the first communities in the country to pilot the now-nationwide project.

The Journal-World, once a major sponsor of the program, no longer provides financial support as it did under the ownership of the Simons family.

Aimed at instilling civic involvement in youth, Kids Vote also provides a curriculum to schools in the six to eight weeks leading up the election. The lessons, which trace America’s centuries of struggle toward universal suffrage and the importance of voting rights, serve a valuable purpose, Bauer says — perhaps now more than ever.

With mere weeks to go before Election Day, more and more Americans are expressing concern that their votes may not be counted accurately. A poll released Monday by Politico and Morning Consult found that 41 percent of Americans agree with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump that the election could be “stolen” from him due to widespread voter fraud.

And while claims of election rigging have been largely debunked by academics and elected officials on both sides of the aisle, Bauer worries about the effects of such rhetoric on students.

“I think that’s why it’s so important for us to teach lessons like this about elections, that we have to be able to trust in the voting process and the democracy of our country,” she said, adding that Boys & Girls Club instructors are very careful about not interjecting their own personal beliefs into the curriculum.

Bauer and Kids Vote facilitators hope students will feel empowered by the program. The hands-on experience of “casting your vote and seeing those being counted” is one that, ideally, will stick with kids as they approach adulthood, she said.

All polling sites will be open from 2 to 4:30 p.m. Nov. 8, with the exception of Quail Run Elementary School’s, which will run from 4 to 6 p.m. that day.

Students of Lawrence’s secondary schools will have the chance to cast their votes online Nov. 7-8 via DoubleClickDemocracy, a program of the national Kids Voting USA. Lawrence High School history teacher Fran Bartlett will task her classes with tabulating the local “votes,” as has been the tradition for several years.

“The entire mission of the Boys & Girls Club is to create productive, caring and responsible citizens, and I think we would be doing a disservice to the kids that we serve if we didn’t give them a real-life experience on the importance of voting to make change in their lives and in their communities,” Bauer said. “We talk about starting great futures every day, and this is really the way that all Americans can affect what their future is going to look like.”

In the meantime, Kids Vote is still looking for volunteers (anyone 16 and up is welcome) to staff its polling stations. Those interested in getting involved are encouraged to visit www.volunteerdouglascounty.com for more information.