| Pollinator Candidates Head to Runoff
Mammen Librarians Run a Voting 101 Program Using Mock Election
Following a vote recount and audit of polling location procedures in the 2024 Pollinator Mock Election,, the Bee and the Butterfly will advance to a Runoff Election August 1 - Nov. 5, 2024. 294 under 18 year olds participated January 15 through June 15 at 7 community locations and 19 Get-Out-The-Vote events with the following results: 17% Beetle, 34% Bee and 49% Butterfly. Since no candidate collected 50% or more of the votes, the runoff will determine the final winner.
"We created these Mock Elections as a fun activity for those not yet eligible to vote to introduce the concept of choosing a candidate and voting," explains LWVCA President Jerrie Champlin. "This year, Youth Services Librarians at Mammen Family Library upped the educational benefit of the mock election in two Voting 101 programs for 3rd-5th graders and 5th to 8th graders."
Mammen YS Librarian II Montana Rindahl summarized the programs as follows:
"We developed a worksheet to assist the participants in researching and choosing a candidate. I pulled a few books on each pollinator and some insect encyclopedias for their research and marked some pages with post-it notes that I thought would be particularly helpful to the younger ones.
We started with an overview of how an election works: that there are candidates, each candidate has a platform, and that the candidates will have a debate to talk about their platforms and why they can do the job the best. We talked about what positions are elected - president, representatives, senators and local officers, and that they can vote when they are 18 but this was practice! This took about 10-15 minutes.
We let them choose their pollinator candidate and gave them 15-20 minutes to research and write the platform (fill in the worksheet). The kids could work alone or as a group with the other 'bees', etc. After they completed their worksheets, we had a 'debate' in which each student read their worksheet aloud to share why we should vote for their pollinator choice. Each student then asked a question of each pollinator group. For example, 'What is the largest bee?' or 'What butterfly is native to Texas?'- anything that they were interested in. The pollinator group had to work together to answer the questions and sometimes the answer 'I don't know!' That took about 10 minutes and then we voted.
Once all the votes were cast, I emptied the ballot box and we counted the votes together to make sure it was fair! I had a lot of fun personally and I think the kids liked it too. They really got into the debate, especially asking each other questions they thought would stump the group. It's a great program to do during major election years!"
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