Kids Voting USA

Voter turnout for the 2012 election is expected to be high, and in Door County, it’s going to be just a little bit higher thanks to a program called Kids Voting USA.

Kids Voting USA is a national program that provides teachers with a curriculum to teach students about voting and then sends students to the polls alongside their parents. Three businessmen from Arizona – who came up with the idea while, of all things, vacationing in Costa Rica – started the program in 1988.

The three men witnessed a Costa Rican election, where voting day is a national holiday and voter turnout averages between 80 and 85 percent. Parents didn’t have anywhere to take their children while they voted, so they brought them with to the polls. The government provided the kids with a mock ballot, so they’d have something to do while their parents shaped the course of Costa Rica’s future.

Inspired by the Costa Rican elections, the three men launched their own program to bring children to the polls in Phoenix, and it eventually grew nationwide.

In Door County the program is coordinated by Mark Nelson, who decided to institute it after the 2000 election.

“I was watching the local news after the presidential election, and they had a story on how the Brown County Chamber did it,” said Nelson. “I started doing it in the 2002 election in Sturgeon Bay. Then in 2006 I added Sevastopol, 2008 I added Southern Door, and in 2010 we added Gibraltar.”

For this year’s election, students from Sturgeon Bay, Sevastopol, and Southern Door will be casting a ballot and receiving a sticker saying they voted.

Volunteers enlisted by Nelson will be working the polls all day to take in the children’s votes, and then they will tally them up and send results to each school, allowing kids to see who won their election.

“The kids have a tendency to vote the way their parents do,” said Nelson. “We have more liberal and conservative areas of the county, and they tend to fall into those trends.”

While the actual process of putting their votes in the ballot box is important, Nelson said the Kids Voting USA curriculum teaches kids some pretty essential lessons about the history of voting, why we vote, and how to read into the issues.

“One of my favorite assignments for very young kids is to have a roundtable discussion at the kitchen table about who their parents are voting for and why,” said Nelson.

At Sevastopol Schools, the program focuses in on kids in kindergarten through fifth grade. Elementary school principal Joe Majeski said Kids Voting USA brings public schools back to their roots.

“Public schools started in the 1800s for one purpose, to teach reading so citizens could vote,” said Majeski. “Now public schools do so much more, but I see Kids Voting as returning to the main reason public schools started in the first place.”

About two weeks or so before the election, teachers at Sevastopol spend two or three 20-minute periods discussing voting. Majeski said he believes the program isn’t only helping students, it’s also encouraging parents to head to the polls when they might not bother otherwise.

“If you get kids and parents doing things together,” said Majeski, “they’ll stay in the habit.”

Nelson said hundreds of children have been heading to the polls in the county as a result of Kids Voting USA, and he’s hoping the program will continue to grow.

Mark Nelson is still looking for volunteers to assist at the polls with Kids Voting USA. Volunteers typically work a four-hour shift in the morning, afternoon, or evening. Anyone interested in volunteering can contact Nelson at [email protected].