Mr. Teacher

Democracy in Action

by John Pearson

A couple of weeks ago, my school held a mock election. Each child received a nifty little ballot with a picture of McCain and Palin, and Obama and Biden, as well as the Independent party candidates, Heckle and Jeckle.

When the votes were tallied and all the chads were unhung, Obama had won by a landslide. Not only that, but when the results were announced, my kids cheered wildly!

I had no idea my kids were so politically savvy or interested in the election process. I also thought maybe the kids thought they were voting for THE Rock rather than BA-Rack.

Earlier this week, I asked them to write down who they voted for and why. As I expected, the majority of my 41 kids voted for Obama, but their reasons were quite interesting.

Only two of my students voted for John McCain. One of them said he voted for McCain because he is a Republican and Obama is a Democrat. Who knew even children so young could be influenced by straight party lines? Though I also had an anti-Republican vote from a boy who said he voted for Obama, “because John McCain was gonna be the same as George W. Bush.”

Of all the Obama votes, I was very surprised at one of the rationales that showed up repeatedly. One child wrote, “John McCain wants to send the Mexican people to Mexico.” Another wrote, “I voted for Obama because he wants the Mexicans to stay in Dallas.” Yet another wrote, “I voted for Obama because if John McCain won he was gonna send us all to Mexico.”

His sentiment was repeated in about 10 other testimonials. I will be the first to admit that I don’t follow politics very closely (about as closely as the average American follows New Zealand ice hockey scores), but I think I would have taken notice if McCain had really been talking about expelling immigrants.