A Little Voting Day Advice

The day is finally here. It is Election Day 2008 and this is supposed to be a big one!

Well, if you haven't gone out and voted yet or are still on the fence about who to vote for, I wanted to provide you with some last minute insights on the candidates.

I work at an elementary school and the election is the hot topic here today among the students. Seriously, these kiddos care about it and are not shy about sharing their opinions. I didn't have to bring it up once, they brought it up every time. I stood in the hallway this morning as the kids came in and they bombarded me with their opinions on who I should vote for. Some of them were literally mad that they aren't old enough to vote. Impressive.

So here is what I found out. It seems that Barack has the popular vote around here. Out of the 5 or 6 kids I talked to in depth (as in depth as you can get with a second grader) only two of them were for McCain. Each time any one of them told me who they favored I made sure to ask "why?" and these were the answers that I got:

Why Obama?
"He's cool"
"He's nice"
"He's funny"
"He'll lower our taxes"...to this I said, "not if you are rich" and she
replied with, "well, I'm not rich." Fair enough.

One of our autistic students just drew a picture of Obama and was chanting his name loudly. I think we all know his thoughts.

Why not Obama?
"He will kill people."

Why McCain?
"I like him"
"Because my dad's name is John"

And, my absolute favorite, when I asked one kiddo why I shouldn't vote for McCain he said, "He's going to die." Haha, I laughed a lot at that one.

I hope this helps all of you voters out there. These kids are pretty passionate about their decisions even if they don't actually have any good reason to be. Who knows, maybe they are on to something. Or maybe they just have passionate and vocal parents. :) Happy voting day!