VoteGuide_2007_final.

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A Discussion Guide for

VOTE!
★ websites ★

There are many websites with classroom activities helpful when discussing voting. A few are listed below.
To link directly to these sites and others, visit the ‘Teacher Connections’ page for VOTE!:
http://www.christelow.com/classroom/vote.html
on Eileen Christelow’s website: www.christelow.com written and illustrated by
http://www.vermontvotesforkids.com/vtvotes/index.shtml EILEEN CHRISTELOW
Deb Markowitz, Vermont’s Secretary of State has created a wonderful website to help explain voting to kids.
This website will be useful to teachers, parents and kids from any state.
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http://www.pbs.org/elections/kids
Features extensive lesson plans organized by grade level. Using a town’s mayoral election as a model, this lively, information-
Includes Dear Presidential Diary, Budget Making, To Vote or Not to Vote—to name just a few.
packed book covers all aspects of the voting process, from campaigning and debating
http://www.rockthevote.com/index.php
Use this site when discussing voter registration: how to register, who can register. to registering and volunteer-
ing, all the way to the voting
http://www.FactCheck.org
This site monitors the factual accuracy of what is being said by major politicians in debates, ads, etc. booth. There's even a recount!
http://www.kidsvotingusa.org VOTE!, which was vetted by
Their mission is to prepare kids to become educated and engaged voters. They operate though a national
network of community-based affiliates offering civics activities to partner schools and communities. an expert in voter education,

http://www.takeyourkidstovote.org
includes a timeline of the his-
Activities for parents and kids, elementary through high school age. (Useful to teachers too!) tory of voting in the United
http://www.pollingreport.com States, a glossary of words
http://www.zogby.com/
http://www.gallup.com/ associated with voting, a dis-
Who is ahead? Who is behind? Good sites to use when discussing polling.
cussion of American political
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/index.html
parties, and a list of Internet
This site has daily lesson plans for grades 6-12, developed in partnership with the Bank Street College of
Education. The focus is on current events. There are a number of useful activities relevant to voting. resources.
(You’ll need to use the Lesson Plan Search.) Here is an example:
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/lessons/20071029monday.html?searchpv=learning_lessons

★ “It’s hard to imagine a more accessible introduction to voting.”

To order Vote! by Eileen Christelow, call toll-free (800)225-3362 or fax (800)674-7568 —ALA Booklist, starred review
978-0-618-24754-7 $16.00 (cl) ★ 978-0-547-05973-0 $4.99 (pa)

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Clarion Books · a Houghton Mifflin Company imprint
215 Park Avenue South · New York, NY 10003
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teaching extensions and activities
★ 1 WHO ARE WE VOTING FOR?
We tend to focus on voting when there is a presidential
election. But we vote at least once a year, either for local,
state or federal offices or issues. VOTE! focuses on a
mayoral election. Does your town have a mayor? If not,
who governs your town? Do you have a selectboard?
A town council?
★ Make a chart of your town government. What do these
people do?
★ Make a chart of the the state and federal offices. What
do these people do?
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2 WHAT ARE THE ISSUES?
The Mayor or select people deal with problems
confronting your community. Sometimes the town
officers vote on how to solve the problem; sometimes the
community does.
In VOTE! one candidate wants to build new schools,
the other wants to build a stadium. Which would your
students support? There is sure to be a difference of
opinion. Discuss the pros and cons: What is the cost to
the community? How does the community benefit?
★ How are you going to decide? Draw straws? Flip a coin?
Vote? Try each way. Is the end result different? Which is the
most fair way to choose? Why?
★ Ask students to think about local issues that affect
them directly: a school bond issue, a bottle deposit bill,
recycling, water pollution, potholes in the streets. Every
community has something!
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3 WHERE DO VOTERS GET INFORMATION?
Discuss where people can learn more about candidates or
issues.
★ Have students collect information about candidates or
an issue.
★ 4 WRITE A LETTER
Ask students to write to one of their town officials or
to the editor of the local newspaper about a local issue of
importance to them. They should be sure to cite some
of the information they’ve found. Mail the letters and keep
track of the responses.
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5 DESIGN A POSTER
Talk about symbols and pictures used in election campaigns:
Uncle Sam, the Stars & Stripes for political campaigns, the
color green for environmental issues.
★ Have students collect posters, bumper stickers, campaign
literature. What symbols do they use?
★ Have students design posters or buttons supporting a
candidate or issue, using symbols and information they
have learned. (For buttons, cut circles from poster board
and affix velcro dots.)
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6 CONDUCT A POLL
Discuss how polling is conducted.
★ Have students conduct a poll. The poll can be conducted
among fellow students and families. Questions can be as
simple as how many hours people watch TV each week or
they can be about a town issue the class has discussed.
★ You can break down the poll so you know whether the
respondents are kids, adults, male or female. Students can
make a bar chart of the results. What do the results tell
them?
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7 POLITICAL PARTIES
There are more than two parties.
★ Ask students to find information on political parties.
How many parties can they find? What are the parties’
symbols and platforms?
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★8 WHAT HAPPENS WHEN MORE THAN TWO
PARTIES RUN CANDIDATES IN AN ELECTION?
★ Research different ways to vote.
★ Download a ballot from the internet. Is it easy to
There’s a chance that none of the candidates will win more understand?
than fifty percent of the vote. If that happens, there
is another election (a runoff) between the top two vote
getters. But many people think that a better solution would
★ If you are having a school or class election, have students
design a ballot. Ballots can be paper or they can be on a
computer screen. Is there a way to recount them?
be for voters to rank the candidates in order of preference, ★ Discuss how votes are private. No one needs to know
indicating their first choice, second choice, and so on. who voted for whom. Why is this a good idea?
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This is called an INSTANT RUNOFF election. Several cities
10 WHERE DO PEOPLE VOTE?
have adopted Instant Runoff and more are considering it.
How many polling places are in your town? Where
Australia has used it for years. Is this a fairer way to vote
are they located? Many are in schools which would give
when there are more than two candidates? Try voting both
students an opportunity to visit a polling location.
ways, then discuss the results.
★ Have students research where polling places are in your
★ First, hold a regular election, using paper ballots, where
town. Locate them on a map.
students vote for their favorite of five animal ‘candidates’.
★ Encourage students to go with their parents to vote.
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Does any animal get more than 50% of the vote? If not,
vote again between the two top vote getters. Who wins? 11 KIDS CAN’T VOTE
★ Then vote again, this time using the Instant Runoff But they can encourage their family members to vote.
method, again use paper ballots. Ask students to vote for Are they all registered?
the animal ‘candidates’ in order of preference, indicating ★ Have students research how and where people register
which is their first, second, third, fourth and fifth choice. to vote. They may be able to convince some family
With five candidates, it’s unlikely one candidate will members to register and tell them how to do it.
receive more than 50% of the votes.
Eliminate the lowest vote-getter. The ballots cast for the
eliminated candidate now have their second choice counted.
This process continues until one candidate receives a
majority.
For a sample Instant Runoff election between five
Muppet characters, see:
http://instantrunoff.fairvote.org/how/muppets/
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9 ELECTRONIC VOTING
How do people vote in your community? Paper and
pencil? Lever machines? Touch-screen machines? Optical
scan machines? Internet voting?
In the past few years many states have bought new
electronic touch-screen voting machines. The new
technology helps election officials tally votes quickly.
However with many of these machines, there is no paper
ballot and therefore no way to verify that the machines
are counting the votes correctly. It has been demonstrated
that electronic touch-screen voting machines can be
hacked and vote totals changed. Congress has been talking
about requiring that all voting machines produce a paper
record of each vote.
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