New
Zealand curriculum framework
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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...
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