Ypsi High Election, 2008!

This week was very fun! In response to the historical election, I decided to create an activity for the students to teach them about the voting process and relate it to math. Fortunately, my teacher gave me virtually the whole hour to do the exercise in most hours, so I wasn't crunched for time, and I was very pleased with how things went.

The exercise went something like this. I created a couple of overheads for an interactive presentation of how the United States uses the electoral college system and went into detail about how electoral votes are calculated and different rules between states that are of importance to the voting population. I then taught them how to calculate electoral votes given the population data. I also introduced some of the positive and negative things about the electoral system and asked them their opinions on it. I was impressed to see that the students had been keeping up with the election and had an interest in current events.

After explaining to them the basic principles involved with the electoral college, I split the class into groups, or "states." Some states had a large number of students while some states had only two or three students. I helped them calculate a theoretical number of electoral votes they would get using the United States current system, but the number was based on the population of the classroom. Then they were to come up with a name for their "state" and write their respective electoral votes on the board for the rest of the class to see. Then, I had them check whether or not each group's electoral votes was correct.

After this, the class chose two presidential candidates. The rules were that one candidate had to be male, and the other female to recognize the historical campaigning system. I then isolated the presidential candidates and made them pick between two issues which they would debate to the class. The first was whether or not schools should offer healthier food. The other was whether or not uniforms should be allowed. I flipped a coin that decided who would argue the affirmative and negative positions. They got a couple of minutes to review the electoral votes on the board to come up with a strategy to recruit votes.

Then, I introduced the presidential candidates to the rest of the class, and explained that they would be debating on a specific issue. The candidates presented some very interesting arguments to the class, and we had a mini question and answer session which I feel was the best part of this activity because the students seemed to get really involved.

Then, the 'states' voted on the candidates with a majority, winner take all policy (simulating how the United States acquires electoral votes in most states). We then tallied up the votes for each candidate and determined a theoretical winner. After determining the winner, Mrs. Mills and I briefly reflected on the experience. I told them a few reasons as to why this mock election was not completely realistic and got some feedback from them. I also explained to them the importance of math in politics and offered suggestions to those who were interested in this area that they may want to pursue a career in political science or economics. Mrs. Mills explained the importance of emotion in the elections and how many of the students were using emotions to characterize the presidential candidates and straying off the issues (similar to the real election).

Overall, I thought the exercise went very well, and I am going to make an effort to create interactive presentations like this one. I had a lot of fun