Ballots for Kids

A friend of ours picked up his 10-year-old daughter at school and took her with him whenhe went to vote on Tuesday afternoon--not with any particular idea of giving the girl a lesson in civics, he acknowledges, but simply because that was the convenient thing to do. As it happens, the girl got a nice little lesson anyway in what voting is all about.

When our friend emerged from the voting booth after punching the appropriate holes in his ballot, he was surprised to see his daughter punching away at a ballot of her own. Her ballot, however, was different. It did not contain the names of candidates for offices exalted and obscure, nor did it ask for approval or disapproval of propositions and amendments. Instead, it contained a short list of questions that could be answered by punching out a hole for yes, or another for no. One of the questions, the girl thought she remembered later, was whether California should revert to its originalIndian name. Our friend let that one pass, since he was embarrassed to admit that he didn’t know that California had a pre-Spanish name.

The Los Angeles County registrar-recorder’s office says that it has never heard of such a children’s ballot. Presumably, then, it might have been something that the workers at one precinct thoughtfully provided to occupy kids while their parents were busy for a few minutes in the polling booth. We think it a splendid idea. Not only did the look-alike ballot keep children entertained and out from under foot, but it let them know at an early age that voting is a matter of thinking and choosing among alternatives. And all this without the kids first having to be subjected to a multimillion-dollar bombardment of political hype and distortions.

How many precincts provide ballots for children? We don’t know, but it would be nice to see all of them so equipped.