Presidential Elections

As part of learning about the presidents, Franklin Elementary/Middle/High school held an election. The key responsibilities of our president, instead of vetoing, foreign policy, and military, are food, chores, and entertainment. Planning began on Wednesday, although campaigning began as soon as elections were announced. We learned the fairness and complexity of democracy when we started voting when to hold the elections and who would do what. It took a lot of time to get everyone satisfied! We had five candidates. Jessica ran and promised trips to the park and library and that she'd make cinnamon rolls. Emily said that she would curl all the girls' hair Sunday mornings, as well as other things. Spencer campaigned that he'd make no major changes to our schedule and that he'd give everyone a computer turn every day. Katie said that everyone would get a cinnamon roll, a computer turn, and a TV turn, and that the girl's hair would be curled on Sunday morning. (She took the best from everyone's campaign.) David also ran for president. Campaigning was competitive; posters covered the fridge and post-it notes covered everything else. On Thursday afternoon we held a debate. Key issues: what qualifies the candidate for presidency, what their goals were as president, and what subject they would add to school. Then we went inside to hold the election. Hannah decorated a tissue box to hold the votes and created the ballots. We voted in age order, more or less. Braden voted too. The candidates sat on the floor in a line and Braden crawled to the one he voted for. First he crawled to Spencer. So we rearranged our seating order. We did that about five times and every time Braden crawled to David. It was very cute. Then everyone voted. It was a tie! So there we re-voted and Jessica won. Katie, who was Jessica's vice president, celebrated. Everyone else was elected to Congress. This afternoon Jessica was sworn into office and we held an inaugural parade through the living room to the kitchen to the table for pizza. Originally we were planning to ride our bikes through the streets, but it was raining. After lunch Spencer got ready for a scout camp-out. He is very excited. Luckily the rain has stopped and the sky is clearing. We hope he has a great time.