How To Be An Informed Voter

Lesson Overview

This lesson focuses on a voter's need to be fully informed prior to casting a vote on Election Day and how to acquire the necessary data. Students acquire what a aye or no vote or a determination to abstain means on a election. Students learn the definitions of amendment, initiative, proposition, and referendum. By completing the handouts for school referendums, students are given the opportunity to think critically and to learn firsthand why voters need to be fully informed about ballot questions.

Suggested Grade Level

Middle school

Estimated Time to Complete

One to two class periods of 45 minutes each

Lesson Objectives

Afterward completing this lesson, students should exist able to:

define all the terms in the vocabulary listing;
compare the concepts of majority rule and minority rights;
explain what is found on a voting election in their state;
reflect on why becoming an informed voter is necessary in the American Electoral System.

Vocabulary

abjure
amendment
direct democracy
initiative
bulk
bulk dominion
minority rights
pop sovereignty
proposition
plebiscite

Materials Needed

An Election Ballot (and perchance an absentee election from your secretary of land's website or Registrar of Voters)
Quick Reference Guide or Voter Information Guide (as well from your Secretarial assistant of State's website or the Registrar of Voters)
- These guides will contain information on the initiatives, propositions, referendums, or constitutional amendment questions for the upcoming ballot.
Instructor Resource ane – Vocabulary defined
Schoolhouse Referendum Questions (Student Handout ane)
School Referendum Data (Student Handout two)
Textbook(s) – either Nosotros the People: The Citizen & The Constitution, Level two, or the textbook used past your school or both.

Earlier the Lesson

Contact the Registrar of Voters function or visit your Secretarial assistant of State's website to obtain ane re-create of an election ballot and/or ane absentee ballot to be used in the election cycle being discussed.
Review all of the materials needed for the Lesson, (make copies as needed).
Refer to your country constitution and local charter for titles, terms, and duties of elected offices on the election.
Assign students to review the Quick Reference Guide or Voter Information Guide for homework and to bring to form a list of questions (assign a minimum/maximum if necessary) they have about the information on the ballot.

Lesson Procedure

1. How Would You Vote?

(Vocabulary words are listed as part of this lesson. You the teacher should complete whatsoever vocabulary action that your class has become accepted to, i.east. a vocabulary-wall or a journal entry, etc. Definitions tin be found in Teacher Resources one if needed.)

Ask students to complete the ballot which you are giving them (Educatee Handout ane) considering the school assistants is considering these items. (The information on the handout is intentionally express; however, ellipses point that some additional information is available) The demand is immediate, and so the ballots must exist completed and collected to be sent downwards to the administrative offices all in 5-six minutes. (You may demand to define the word abstain for them). Do non stop students from consulting with one-some other quietly. Enquire i of your students to collect the ballot and pre-arrange for their "play-acting" delivery of them.

Immediately ask students to bear witness how they voted on each particular, (yes, no, or abjure) past raising their hands. Proceed a tally on the board. Ask a student at the back of the room to quietly go along a divide running tally.

When all votes are tallied, ask students the following questions.

Which measures received a majority vote?
Differentiate between a plebiscite and an initiative? (You may demand to help them with this)
Which of these measures were referendums and which were initiatives and which are neither?
Why did they choose to abjure from voting?
How did decisions to abjure touch the result for an individual mensurate?
How did they experience about being rushed through the procedure?

Compare your board tally with that of the student keeping a separate tally at the dorsum of the room. Did you get in at the same results? If not, why might that have happened? What can be washed about information technology now?

ii. Can I Alter My Vote?

Distribute Student Handout 2 and enquire students to read it. Then ask them the post-obit questions:

What did they really vote for or confronting?
Would they change their minds now if they could? Why?
Would those who had abstained from voting bandage a vote now? If so, how might this have inverse the outcome?

Review the following questions. They may add to the current give-and-take or elaborate the discussion to a larger discussion that leads students to the residuum of the lesson.

Did majority dominion and minority rights play a role in this ballot? (You lot may need to expand the definition of minority rights for the students. The We the People text or the text of your schoolhouse volition help.)
Were any minority rights violated?
What have they learned about voting and the voting process?
- The cardinal response should be that they need to know more about what they are voting on and take more time to vote.
How might the process itself be changed? (Or some such question that has students review the process used to vote.)
- They might say that the vote should take been a surreptitious ballot.

At this point, students should come to the main focus of the lesson -

knowledge

is fundamental to voting and that they demand to be informed voters if they desire to make a positive touch on.

iii. What Does the Election Ballot Look Similar?

Show students the actual ballot election (for the election you are working on). Acquit a mini discussion on the importance of why a voter would need to be informed before casting their vote. Exist sure to contain segments 1 & 2 of this lesson and the possible need for absentee ballots.

Ask students to take out their homework and review any questions they may take nigh the Quick Reference Guide or Voter Information Guide.

Why are these guides important?

Explain that these guides provide a great deal of necessary information.
They allow voters to acquire about the candidates, offices, and initiatives or propositions on the ballot, besides every bit voting locations.
Every registered voter receives one of these guides in the post before the election. Inform the students that the guides are besides available on your secretary of land's website.

Inquire students what questions they have near the guide and offering answers. Clarify titles, terms, and duties for the elected offices on the ballot, as needed.

4. Understanding Ballot Question Classifications (Optional)

(This segment of the lesson can be washed as a dissever entity or equally part of the conclusion.)

Conduct a mini discussion with your students that included questions along with your comments:

What are the unlike classifications of ballot questions that voters are asked to consider?
Ask students to define the following terms: amendment, initiative, proposition, and referendum.
Explicate to students that initiatives and propositions are examples of direct democracy. Amendments, initiatives, propositions, and referendums are all good examples of popular sovereignty. Which, if whatever, are on their current election election?
Ask students whether voting is a course of direct democracy? Why or Why not? Instruct students to plow to a preselected folio in a social studies text with brief information near popular sovereignty, so ask a student to read it aloud.
- Ask students if popular sovereignty is a form of direct democracy.
Ask students how many votes are needed to elect someone to office or pass ballot questions.
Why are election questions as important as positions which volition be renewed (i.eastward. mayor, council fellow member, state assemblyperson, governor, etc.) in elections?
- (A bulk vote on each question will create or defeat a new constabulary or policy.)

5. Last the Lesson

Review the important parts of this lesson by asking students:

What they accept learned about voting on election questions.
To differentiate between an initiative and a referendum.
whether the lesson's initial "schoolhouse voting exercises" involved an initiative or plebiscite (take the students identify each of the measures listed).
Why is it important to be an informed voter?

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