Document text
Kennedy students �elect� Bush, 354-87 Mail Tribune / Bob Pennell In the polling booth at Kennedy Elementary School in Medford, fifth-grader Jenny Peffers, left, helps kindergartner Brieana George cast her ballot Monday. Students learned about nominations, campaigns and elections in a hands-on election experience. Republican George W. Bush won the school�s mock presidential election in a landslide. Kids enact basics of presidential politics By Jonel Aleccia It may be a dead heat in the larger world, but at Kennedy Elementary School in Medford, the presidential race is a runaway victory for George W. Bush. Eighty percent of the 501 kindergarten-through-fifth-graders at the east Medford school voted for the Texas governor in a mock-election Monday. Twenty percent voted for Vice President Al Gore, culminating an exercise that capped a three-week study of U.S. government. "I voted for George Bush," said 5-year-old Colin Hagen, a kindergartner. "My dad said I should � he�s the only smart one." Colin�s views were echoed by 10-year-old Glen Bottorff, who helped take down makeshift voting booths after the election in the school cafeteria. "I voted for Bush," he said. "I guess I�ve heard more about Bush. I haven�t heard that much about Gore." All told, Bush claimed 354 of the 441 student votes cast, compared to 87 for Gore. "It was a 96 percent turnout at the polls," said Danielle Basey, 11, who served as the event�s media consultant. "Sixty people did not vote. Forty of them were kindergartners and their teacher was absent, so they did not know to vote. Twenty-one of them did not choose to vote for some reason or another." Overall, however, the event organized by teachers Kim Gabriel and Donald Hill engaged nearly the entire study body in a hands-on lesson in representative democracy. "The kids who have worked on the campaign have really looked at the electoral process and everything that goes into the campaign," said Gabriel. From stump speeches and voter registration drives to playground straw polls, students enacted the basics of presidential politics. Each youngster was issued a green cardboard voter registration card; each kid had a chance to duck inside a voting booth and slip a ballot into a communal box. "There�s no vote-by-mail at Kennedy Elementary," said Gabriel. For the most part, the process went smoothly, with hundreds of kids tending to their civic duty by lunchtime. Only the very youngest voters needed extra help. "One kindergartner said �I don�t know how to make an X,� " said teacher Judy Richardson. "So we practiced making checks and X�s on the back of our voter registration cards." For older students, though, the campaign was a new view of all the hoopla going on in the grown-up world. "I didn�t know pretty much all the positions that it takes to run for president," said Danielle, the media contact. "I thought they just sent something to your parents." But conducting a playground straw poll quickly offered a lesson in political ethics, she said. "A lot of kids asked who we were voting for but we couldn�t tell them," the young pollster said. "They might have felt like they had to vote our way." About the only lesson the kids didn�t learn was how to play dirty politics, Gabriel said. "We said there will be no mudslinging," the teacher said. "We�ve really taught them the process and kept the emotionalism out of it. We�re not here to bad-mouth anybody." In fact, many of the young voters found their first foray into politics to be both positive and illuminating. "It was just a fun experience to learn how to vote so that when we�re 18 we know how," said Glen Bottorff, the fifth-grader. Nothing could please teacher Gabriel more. "You read all about the apathy and about Southern Oregon University not voting and this kind of gets kids excited about the whole process," she said. "We�re trying to give them the foundation of democracy." Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2000 Mail Tribune, Inc.