Many schools across the USA such as mine receive a service called Channel One. We get free TVs set up throughout the building and spend 12 minutes each day watching the news program Channel One. It’s not a bad service – only 2 of those 12 minutes are commercials and I let my kids talk through them.

They recently did a special One Vote project where they sent ballots around to their Channel One schools (ours included) and let kids vote on whether they wanted President Bush, Senator Kerry, or a third party candidate to win the election. You can see the results here. It was a LANDSLIDE victory for President Bush. (My class was cheering each time they mentioned Bush. I am at least assured that I’m not the only Kerry supporter in school. There are even some students who are Kerry supporters. Just not in my first period class.)

The thing that I was most encouraged by was how many Newton students said that they voted. Everyone in my first period class did. So perhaps vehicles like this might encourage students to also vote in real elections when they are old enough. At least, I hope they will!