Everything I Need to Know about Elections I Learned in Kindergarten (This Morning)

This morning I had the distinct pleasure of assisting my son's kindergarten class with taking part in the entire school's mock election. It was mostly humorous, a little sad, and a very little horrifying. At the end, though, I had to admit that I'd left a kindergarten class a little more educated, although probably not in the way anyone would have preferred.

First, my son's teacher did a great job of explaining that Americans have the right to take part in their government and one of the main ways is through voting in an election. Then she explained that elections are where each citizen, through their vote, picks which candidate he or she thinks is best for the job.

Now, as a very apolitical and cynical human being, I already thought this was putting a brave face on things. But it was also kindergarten, so I figured starting them out with shining optimism and preserving it as long as possible is the right move. So point to Miss C.

But then one of the kids asked who the candidates were. Miss C. explained the current president was Barack Obama and his main challenger was Mitt Romney. Then the room of 5 and 6 year olds flipped feces.

So many of these kids had deeply held opinions about these candidates and voiced them in the same frantic, high pitched tones they would use to beg for candy or more recess. I couldn't parse any specifics (a fact that saddens me for lost comedic value but heartens me because I don' t know if I could sleep at night knowing there are rabid Republicans and Democrats in kindergarten), but they all boiled down to something like "My [parent] says he [the candidate] is doing [horrible thing] to the country!"

Miss C.'s response to this was a firm and only slightly louder than the children, "WE ARE NOT DISCUSSING WHO WE'RE VOTING FOR. THE SECRET BALLOT IS YOUR RIGHT AS AN AMERICAN." She was so stern, though, that I couldn't help but add in my head, "And also a requirement for this class."

Then she ordered the children to line up, and we marched them down to the polling area. We had to wait a bit for the first graders to finish up, and while we were there, I mused. Between the lining up, the forced march, and the waiting for your turn to vote en mass, I sorta wished I'd brought some small green caps with red stars pinned to them.

Once we entered the polling area, each kid had to check in by saying their name. I thought that was pretty lax security, but, honestly, that's about the height of the bar at actual polling places too. A driver's license? Seriously? I had three or four of those in college, and only one had my actual name on it. You want to make it tough? Have the kindergartner write their full name. That would be the equivalent of a DNA scan on me.

This is when the ballot itself was explained. It's also when I realized that programming our system to fail happens as early as kindergarten by well-meaning and loving people who are doing their best to explain complex things to simple minds. As a person who believes that the thing you're voting on becomes less and less important the further it moves away from you geographically (until you reach the nadir of Washington DC where literally nothing that happens there really matters in a substantive way), it was a true shock to me for the following reasons.

Despite having several judges and very interesting state questions on our ballot, the only things on the mock ballot were presidential candidates and their running mates.
The third party candidates were referred to as "the guys you don't hear as much about."
The pictures of the candidates were photocopies so Obama looked way blacker and everybody else looked way whiter. (I really want to make a joke about how Romney couldn't be whiter, but then you'd think I'd tipped my political hand when, in fact, I mostly just think Romney is a deeply typical rich white guy.)

Here began the most fascinating lessons. Despite the rules against it, there was a lot of loud whispering about who was voting for who and why. There were also several kids who forgot what they were doing halfway through the process. I had to re-explain the whole thing and make sure they checked the box properly. Then each child in turn meandered, a little dazedly, over to the ballot box, dropped their ballots in, and received "I Voted!" stickers.

As they sat with huge, beaming smiles on their faces comparing their stickers, I had an epiphany. They believed utterly that they had just done something of staggering importance by using an ill informed opinion to decide what name to make a mark next to before dropping that opinion into a magical box where somewhere, somehow, that opinion would count for something.  They were all immeasureably proud of themselves...for about five minutes. They forgot about the whole thing by the time we made it back to the classroom, and will probably keep on forgetting about it for at least the next four years.

And if that's not a metaphor for the actual grown-up election, I don't know what is.