Kids pick McCain

WASILLA — If you can tell anything from the way their students are voting, the McCain/Palin campaign has got the Valley locked up.

Or so said the results of “Kids Vote,” an event Monday at Cottonwood Creek Elementary where John McCain and Sarah Palin walked away with 79 percent of the vote in the school’s mock election.

In raw numbers, 76 students in grades 1-5 chose Democrat Barack Obama while 289 chose Republican John McCain.

In a separate vote, a mock ballot initiative, the voters favored using pretend school funds to build a rock-climbing wall. The wall took 47 percent of the vote, beating out the alternatives of new playground equipment, a nature trail and educational technology.

In the rough’s election offices. Then they happily accepted an “I Voted” sticker and a red nylon flower.

Lisa Brayton, who runs the school’s computer lab and media classes in addition to coaching reading lessons for fourth-graders, said the vote was the culmination of a number of her lessons. In her media classes, students watched speeches from Obama and McCain as each accepted his party’s nomination.

They also talked about what a president does, what qualifies a person to be president, and why we elect a president.

Retired teachers handing out ballots said they were impressed at the results.

“I can’t believe how well-informed these kids are,” said Rhonda Atkins.

Asked for a prediction, Atkins said, “My prediction is that they are going to vote like their parents, but I just don’t know.”

Cindy Lawton, another retiree, said she was only going to predict a big win for the rock wall.

Vrvilo hadn’t ever done such an election and as far as Brayton could tell the school hadn’t done one in 12 years.

But both agreed, if there was a year to hold a mock election this was it.

“They think it’s cool that our governor is on the ticket,” Brayton said.

Vrvilo said the Palin candidacy teaches the students a lesson about politics in America.

“It makes it more real for our kids that anyone… could become president or vice president,” she said.

And, Brayton said, if the answers submitted on a recent assignment were any indication, that message is sinking in.

One, Brayton said, was pretty standard: “Who can be president?”

“The most beautiful and telling answer,” she said, came from a second-grader. “She wrote, when I get older I can be president.”

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.