Elections and Civic Education:  The Case of Kids Voting USA

by JOHN STUART HALL and PATRICIA M. JONES

National Civic Review, Spring 1998, volume 87, no. 1, page 79-84.

Elections should bring focus, not closure, to a democratic polity This elemental proposition is sometimes lost in modern commentary about elections being horse races and political campaigns seeming to rest more on images than issues. Elections are vital benchmarks of the democratic process not because they settle issues but because they generate debate and dialogue, and because elected representatives anticipate them. Elections educate and socialize - but not as much as they could, because many do not fully participate.

Elections today are undervalued. We are reminded constantly that people are busy, and that cynicism concerning elections and campaigns runs deep; these circumstances reinforce the attitude that it does little good to participate in the political process. Well-publicized declines in voter turnout are frequently pointed to as a sure sign of democratic decline. There are disturbing trends: about one-half the eligible electorate does not participate in presidential elections, and turnout for local elections is much lower than that (frequently less than 20 percent of eligible citizens). Most alarming to those who value the long-term civic education function of elections is the fact that the lowest registration and turnout rates are found among the eighteen-to-twenty-four-year-old group. If this trend persists, the national capacity to debate issues, resolve conflict, and solve public problems may be in jeopardy.

It is not too melodramatic to assert that renewed, creative attention to civic education is a first and essential step in revitalizing elections and sustaining democracy As dismal as the future appears when extrapolating from current trends and the type of analyses that underscore modern isolation and the atomistic society, there is great promise for responding to these forces in the future with collaborative, widespread, community-based civic education. Let us take as an example the simple and potentially powerful Kids Voting USA effort.

First, the Idea

The Kids Voting story begins with a fishing tale. In 1987, three prominent Phoenix businessmen and their wives planned a fishing vacation together. The place they chose for their trip was Costa Rica, a tiny Central American nation (about the size of Vermont and New Hampshire combined) sandwiched between Nicaragua to the north and Panama to the southeast. Its location on the thin arm of land that connects the North and South American continents makes it ideal for deep sea fishing, with the Pacific Ocean on its west coast and the Caribbean Sea on its northeast coast.

The three couples arrived in Costa Rica, so the story goes,(1) shortly after a particularly problematic election in Arizona. Each of the men was aware of the rather dismal voting record of the American populace. It was no surprise, then, that Max Jennings (who was the editor of the Mesa Tribune) picked up on the comments of their cab driver about recent elections in Costa Rica. In the ensuing conversation, the three fishermen learned more about the tiny republic than they bargained for. Costa Rica is one of the oldest and most stable democracies in the Western hemisphere; what is more, it has consistently recorded some of the highest voter participation rates, at times exceeding 90 percent. More surprising to the three visitors was the long-held tradition of children voting right along with their parents. In fact, responsible citizenship is nurtured in Costa Rican children by encouraging them to discuss political issues with adults and in their school classrooms, as well as by casting mock ballots on election day

Intrigued by what they had learned, the three men (Jennings; R. R. Evans, CEO of Evans Management; and Charles A. Wahlheim, president of Joe Woods Development) returned home at the end of their trip determined to find some way to improve voter participation in their own community One year later, Kids Voting began as a pilot program in the Phoenix metropolitan area.

Funded through private sector donations and foundation grants, the three fishermen hired a staff, developed curriculum materials, and arranged for children to vote with their parents. In that first year, forty schools and thirty thousand students from kindergarten through high school participated in the innovative program. It was so successful that by 1990 it was offered statewide in Arizona (675,000 students and 18,000 teachers participated, a remarkable 95 percent of Arizona's school population), and in 1991 Kids Voting was incorporated as a national nonprofit program.

A New Way to Turn Kids on to Politics

Kids Voting is designed to address citizen apathy and improve voter participation by developing a tradition, or habit, of responsible citizenship - and voting - in future generations of Americans. The program teaches children the importance of voting by combining the practice of voting with a school curriculum package that encourages students to read and discuss candidates, issues, and ballot initiatives both in the classroom and at home. In the weeks before elections, kids study local propositions and referenda, evaluate candidates' qualifications and campaign platforms, watch debates, and hold "practice" votes on school-related issues. Then they fill out special voter registration forms, and on election day they go with their parents to the polls and actually cast ballots in special booths. Their results are published in local newspapers alongside those of the adult vote.

Integral to the success of Kids Voting is the close association of actual political experience with formal classroom learning. Member schools receive comprehensive curriculum packages that combine classroom lessons with targeted activities for all grades, K-12. The lesson plans and activities are developed by leading civic education experts across the country and reflect new developments in cooperative and service learning techniques, performance assessment, and technology. Along with the necessary materials to implement a Kids Voting program, the curriculum packages are provided free of charge to any interested school. The curriculum is active, rich in content and skills development, and sometimes fun. Importantly, the curriculum models democratic practice at the classroom level, through cooperative learning structures, group problem solving, and active student-centered experiences. Depending on their ages and stages, students engage in such citizenship-related activities as role playing, holding classroom elections, constructing policy options, solving policy problems, and participating in formal debates.

Individual schools and teachers have latitude to expand and enrich the curriculum with experiential efforts such as field trips and guest panels of candidates invited into the classroom. It is not just the kids who learn from such interactions; one Wisconsin candidate concluded his remarks to a class and was calmly asked by a third grader, "Can you explain your position on abortion?" That's the most important thing, says James van der Klok, president and CEO of Kids Voting USA: "It's our ability to raise kids who will be adults who look at issues critically and analytically."(2)

Building Community While Building Kids Voting USA

Kids Voting USA is a nonpartisan, nonprofit corporation headquartered in Tempe, Arizona. It is supported entirely through grants and contributions from public, nonprofit, and private sector sources and is staffed primarily by volunteers. Member organizations in each state are led by statewide boards of civic and business leaders who involve schools, local newspapers, parents, and community volunteers to implement the program. The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation is the organization's original funder; the national organization and each of the state affiliates receive support from a wide variety of sponsors. According to the Kids Voting USA office, corporate sponsorship has been a win-win process for both sponsors and kids. S. Martin Taylor, vice president of Detroit Edison, summed up the attitude of sponsors:

[Supporting Kids Voting is] one of the few things that a company can do in a community where, I daresay, there will not be one negative view to come from this. Who is opposed to the elective process that we have in this country? Who is opposed to kids and parents becoming closer? Who is opposed to kids learning the election process so that they can be responsible adults? Who can be opposed to kids relating what they are learning in school of the real world? It's one of the best gifts to a community that a company can give.(3)

The program has received extensive national media coverage in its few years of existence. Articles have appeared in Parade Magazine (the Sunday paper supplement), USA Today, Kids Today, both Parents and Parenting magazines, and Family Fun (a Disney publication), among others. Kids Voting has been featured on NBC's "Nightly News," "Today," and "NBA Inside Stuff" television shows, as well as on CNN's "Inside Politics" and "Court TV," CBS's "Up to the Minute," and FOX TV's "Not Just News" show for children. They have also received radio coverage from CBS Radio Network, UPI Radio, BBC Broadcasting, the Mutual Broadcasting System, and the Independent Broadcasters Network.(4)

The growth of Kids Voting has been striking. By 1992, Kids Voting USA included eleven states and involved 1.5 million students.(5) By 1994, participation doubled to include twenty states and the District of Columbia, involving 2.3 million students, one hundred thousand teachers, three thousand schools, eight thousand voter precincts, and fifty thousand volunteers. By 1996, it doubled again, to forty states and D.C., 4.5 million students, two hundred thousand teachers, six thousand schools, about sixteen thousand voter precincts, and eighty thousand volunteers. Kids Voting hopes to reach every community in the country by the year 2000, going statewide in all fifty states.

Impacts, Including Some Unexpected Results

There is much anecdotal evidence concerning positive impacts of Kids Voting. According to one story, a skeptical newspaper publisher in Boulder spent several hours conducting his own exit polls one election day. After interviewing many students about who and what they voted for, he ran up to a Kids Voting volunteer exclaiming, "It works! It really works! We need this for adults!"(6)

More systematic evaluation, including a study of a panel of students who have gone through the entire K-12 curriculum, is under way.(7) Since Kids Voting went nationwide in 1991, the program has been studied by scholars around the country, among them Steven Chaffee of Stanford University, Jack McLeod at the University of Wisconsin, and Bruce D. Merrill of Arizona State University. Merrill's research, which includes postelection surveys of teachers, students, and parents conducted for Kids Voting since 1988, has revealed a startling, unanticipated consequence: adult turnout in areas having an active Kids Voting presence also increases! "Since 1988 . . . the results have been astounding: Kids Voting USA indeed achieves its goals. It is an effective system to energize democracy from the bottom up - beginning with youth that reaches adults, too. Time and again, statistics from the research have demonstrated . . . a level of increased communication among youth, educators, and family and much more. Most of all, Kids Voting is found to increase adult voter turnout by virtue of its participatory element with students, a legacy of enhanced participatory democracy which the organization helps ensure will endure."(8)

In his 1994 postelection study, Merrill found that in communities with Kids Voting programs, adult turnout increased by an average of 3 percent (amounting to more than eighty thousand adults). In Georgia and Washington state, the increase was as high as 9 percent. The 1996 postelection survey results (which sampled registered voters in five cities: Phoenix; Buffalo; Salem, Oreg.; Wausau, Wis.; and Greensboro, N.C.) showed 5-10 percent of the respondents indicating the Kids Voting program as a factor in their decision to vote. Nationwide, this means about six hundred thousand adults were persuaded to vote by the Kids Voting program.(9)

Research that includes responses from children revealed that 75 percent reported watching broadcasts about elections on television, 49 percent reported reading about the election in newspapers, and 29 percent read about elections in magazines. More important, 60-70 percent of the children said they went home and asked their parents about the election. McLeod's findings echoed Merrill's: "[Kids Voting] has strong effects on election and civic knowledge and in general voting participation."(10) Similarly, Chaffee and colleagues found that Kids Voting serves as the catalyst for political socialization: "Students exposed to Kids Voting talked more at home about politics, and this appeared to stimulate . . . family communication, which in turn is associated with increased levels of political participation."(11)

Kids Voting and the Future

Kids Voting is a successful experiment, but it is not a panacea. Although there is more to learn about the experiment's impacts, we know that civic education cannot be limited to voting and to the decisions made on election day. In addition, the program's leaders and proponents are quick to point out that even though Kids Voting is presently found in forty states, it is normally limited to selected communities and schools within each state.

Yet this experiment shows great promise. Kids Voting can expand and have even greater impact through promotion and development in many new communities (with increased attention to building bottom-up community support and connections) and more intensive evaluation. The organization is currently looking at development of a CD-ROM for interactive work at home and in school. This particular innovation, as well as the broader learning package and process, fits with what we know about socialization, learning, and positive peer pressure. At a time when many families and adults seem to lack the time or inclination to provide civic education at home, schools and community organizations can use Kids Voting to help fill a very dangerous vacuum of civic knowledge and action.

Notes

1. Ryan, M. "When Kids Go to the Polls, So Do Their Parents." Parade Magazine, Oct. 30, 1994, pp. 8-9.

2. Interview with James van der Klok, president and chief executive officer of Kids Voting USA, Phoenix, Ariz., Nov. 5, 1997.

3. Information provided in Kids Voting promotional package, supplied by Kids Voting USA Headquarters, 398 S. Mill Ave. Suite 304, Tempe, AZ 85281; tel. (602) 921-3727, fax (602) 921-4008.

4. Kids Voting promotional package.

5. Statistics on participation provided by Kids Voting USA.

6. Kids Voting promotional package.

7. Van der Klok interview.

8. "Kids Voting USA: 1996 Post-Election Research." Unpublished report for Kids Voting USA by B. Merrill, Arizona State University, Tempe.

9. Kids Voting promotional package.

10. "Learning to Live in Democracy: The Interdependence of Family, Schools, and Media." Report by J. McLeod, Mass Communications Research Center, University of Wisconsin, Apr. 1994.

11. Chaffee, S. H., Moon, Y., and McDevitt, M. "Stimulation of Communication: Reconceptualizing the Study of Political Socialization." Report by S. H. Chaffee, Y. Moon, and M. McDevitt, for Communication Theory and Methodology Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications convention, Mar. 1995.

John Stuart Hall is professor of public affairs and public service at Arizona State University in Phoenix. The author of numerous books, articles, and research reports on domestic policy and politics in the United States, he is a member of the National Civic League board of directors.

Patricia M. Jones is a faculty associate in the School of Public Affairs and the Center for Environmental Studies at Arizona State University. She edits the Recycling Review, a quarterly sponsored by the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality.