Home-Style Elections

          Wanna know what Election 2004 was like for "a family like ours " (i.e. homeschooling six kids)? I got inspired when questioned about why the kids with me at the polls weren't in school- I explained that it was their civics lesson for the day. Then I was inspired to run an impromtu election at home.

         It went like this: I collected nominations from my kids (in writing) for what we would have for dinner that night. I listed them all on a paper ballot, with simple instructions ("Place an X next to ONLY one choice") and proceeded to have everyone in our house that morning vote. I teach a homeschool art class
Tuesday mornings, so we had a bigger pool of voters than usual.

         It was a fascinating microcosm of the real election process! First, lots of complaints from some of my kids that people got to vote "who don't even live here." Hmmmm? Heard that one before? Debates over alien status & residency requirements ensued. Also a good deal of verbal campaigning by my kids, trying to get people to choose their favorite, including some covert coercion/bribery of the younger kids. Then there were several spoiled ballots (I gave them another when they handed me the spoiled one), with me
being questioned as to my qualifications to count them!

         THEN, we ended up with a tie between two of the six choices on the ballot!

         Ignorance showing (How would they break a tie in the real election?), I did a spot-check on the internet & learned that the House gets to pick the President & Senate Vice president, in the case of an electoral tie. "That's not fair!" complained some of the kids!

         So, I had each family participating in the class (there were four) pick representatives, one for every two family members in attendence. (no one complained, surprisingly, that our family got the most representatives). More bickering, this time within families (and questions of corruption in the process within one family, whom shall remain nameless. I finally had to give them a time limit to pick their representatives!). At last the representatives were chosen & given paper ballots. The tie was broken! (I
had a sweaty moment when I worried we'd have another tie. What then, we
wonders????)

         Afterwards, there was intense debate over the validity of the process. One kid whom shall remain nameless, but whom I know VERY well, started polling other kids in his family about how they voted, then complained that only one of them had actually chosen the winner, but that they got stuck with the results! VERY interesting.... There was one kid (again nameless, but I know him well) who claimed that one of the younger kids "misunderstood the ballot" and really meant to vote for something else, so we should recount it taking that into account. VERY VERY interesting. Eventually we did actually do our art lesson, but the election was by far the most educational part of our day!

         By the way, we had pizza that night(nominated by Elizabeth, my youngest). And this afternoon Elizabeth piped up, "Can we vote for dinner tonight?"

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!