6/8/2010 Election Day

We don't have a polling place for primary elections this year, but we can walk half a block to a church to drop off our mail-in ballots.

Gabriel had a lot of questions about what an election is and what we were voting about, so I tried to demonstrate the concept of voting with ice cream.

"Who votes for chocolate?" (Gabriel and Katrina raise their hands)
"Who votes for vanilla?" (no hands)
"Who votes for strawberry?" (Julian raises his hand)

Chocolate 2, vanilla 0, strawberry 1. "Chocolate wins!"

Of course, propositions about public funding of elections is much harder to describe in kid-speak, but they did like the idea of being able to vote down vanilla. With Gabriel, I explained it a little better: "You know how you pay sales tax when you buy a toy? One thing you might vote for is if you'd pay more of that tax in order to build more train tracks."

It was a fun short walk, but someday I hope they put it together that Mom and Dad always (well, usually always) voted.


Gabriel carried my ballot and put it in the ballot box too. Our discussion about it was pretty trivial this time, but we're laying the groundwork.

6/8/2010