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Kids Voting
From the Centre for Citizenship Education
A Political Awareness in Schools Programme, including a Kids Voting
project, has been made available to social studies classes in Auckland
City, sponsored by the Auckland City Council.
The Political Awareness Programme covers issues ranging from participation
to the processes of consultation. It helps young people learn about options
for participating in consultative processes such as the Long-Term Community
Council Plans, strategic plans, making submissions, and speaking to regular
council meetings.
The Kids Voting project, covering both local and parliamentary elections, is a fun exercise, good for the students and their parents.
Students, at election time, focus on actual candidates, the promotional messages candidates put in letter boxes, in media and talks they may give at school. Students think about what the candidates say, talk about the election in the classroom and at home, review the real-life election documentation the Auckland City Kids Voting Programme puts into participating schools, and they vote around the same time as their parents post their votes. The Kids Voting documentation includes voting papers with the actual candidates and their affiliations for the kids to choose from, counting sheets and ballot boxes. In the three-week period during which their parents may be sending in their postal votes, teachers are likely to step up their use of this material as a focus of students’ social sciences studies.
The pace tends to step up on the day before the voting finishes, with the class voting, using their own electoral roll they have compiled of class members, marking it to confirm one person one vote, marking their own ballot papers, and placing them in a locked ballot box.
On the Monday after Election Day the classroom ballot box is opened, the votes counted and reported. Students then compare the results of the classroom election with the official election results.
In Auckland City in the 2001 local body elections, the students voted strongly for the candidate with a four-word election slogan: “I won’t nanny around”. The voters in the official election voted strongly against that candidate.
The Kids Voting Programme has been refined in Auckland City for 11 to14 year olds. Its objectives are to:
- foster political participation in general
- start with kids who cannot yet vote in Parliamentary and local authority elections
- stimulate change from low to high voter turnout by those who are eligible voters
- increase parents’ participation in voting.
The Kids Voting programme has been promoted in other parts of New Zealand, encouraged also by the contact people have had with those in the USA who have used it to foster political participation such as voter turnout. US research has suggested young potential voters aged over 14 years tend to be preoccupied with other study and personal issues, and don’t focus so keenly on local Kids Voting programmes. DecisionMaker Guide to Parliament and Government reported on the interest of Lower Hutt candidates in the introduction of Kids Voting from their American sister city.
Introduce Kids Voting elsewhere
Auckland City says that if other local authorities want to
introduce the Kids Voting system
it has developed, city officials will be more than happy to assist other councils
to introduce the programme. Enquirers should contact Community Advisor Bridget
Sewell at Auckland City Council: bridget.sewell@aucklandcity.govt.nz
