| |
|
Worksheet
23: Join the Underage Voter's Campaign
How
to cast your vote and what happens on polling day
The
ideas for this activity need to be checked with the relevant authorities:
social studies teachers as well as the initiators of the underage
voters campaign (who would need to raise some points with the Chief
Electoral Officer etc) to answer:
Which
of the following steps should be done
- by the
organisers,
- by the
school administration;
- principal;
- Board
of Trustees;
- by the
social studies teacher;
- by
the students;
- Parents'
Association;
- Parent
and other volunteers.
A
preamble should be drafted, accentuating ideas such as these:
- "get
informed on the parties who seek your parents' vote
- draw
up the questions you want to ask them
- Homework
- discuss the questions with your parents
- At school
- discuss what the parties seem to offer that answers those
questions
- So you
want a say in electing the party that might meet your needs"
The
worksheet might unfold as follows (with the difficult bits taken
away from the kids and dealt with by adults).
Discuss - How do you vote in a General ElectionHow do you get enrolled?
- Make a
school electoral roll, of those who want to vote in this election
- one group
draws up the registration documents
- all of
you who want to enrol, get enrolled on the school enrolment
list
- one group
asked to ensure that this list is available in the polling booths
near your school where your parents will vote
- assuming
the Chief Electoral officer approves this arrangement
- discuss
what will happen in the polling booth on election day
- who will
be there? Scrutineer etc (appointed by the parties) , polling
clerks ( appointed by the representative of the Chief Electoral
officer)
- discuss-
can we appoint our scrutineer
- how could
we organise this?
- what
does the scrutineer do?
- what
does the polling clerk do?
- discuss-
how secret is my vote?
- if its
secret, why do they tick my name off the list of voters and
put a code on it and on my voting paper?
- What happens
if I do not vote?
- What reasons
might somebody have for not voting?
- One group
should organise voting papers for the underage voters campaign.
- One group
needs to organise what happens in the local polling booths on
election day.
- One group
needs to organise an underage voters campaign ballot box, so
that there will be one for each polling place.
- One group
needs to identify where voting booths are in our electorate.
- One group
needs to organise private voting booth to be used only by underage
voters (in a place also where adult voters do not get disturbed).
- One group
needs to contact a local newspaper, radio, TV, internet newsgroup
or other interested media to see if it will carry reports, including
the results, from the underage voters campaign.
- Could
one of the polling clerks be appointed by the school to receive
our underage kids vote?
- Could
our polling clerk issue our voting paper?
- Could
our scrutineer mark our names of the electoral roll our school
provides?
- Could
our polling clerk and our scrutineer do the voting count just
as the adults have their's done?
- Could
our polling clerk issue the results to an electorate counting
office staffed by members of the underage voters campaign?
- Could
our electorate results be sent to an underage voters campaign
national Chief Returning Office?
- the results,
reported as they come from booths, electorates and national
underage voters campaign offices, get offered to participating
media.
Plan
the follow up after the candidates chosen by the underage campaign
have been selected...
|
|
|
