My daughter, a 5th grader, came home from school yesterday and handed Mr. Brillig & I an essay she'd written. She said "You have to read this tonight." I have her permission to share her essay with you:
Dear Mom and Dad,
Here are some reasons you should vote.
You need to vote because you need to support whoever you think is right for the job. Also, every vote counts. Finally, everyone gets a say in who wins! If you don't vote, and the person you don't want has a victory because some people didn't vote, you might feel bad, since you were one of those people.
Now, here are some of the jobs of the President. Who do you think is right to do these? The President is the Commander in Chief of the armed forces. He/She is the person who meets with the leaders of other countries to make agreements. The President makes treaties with other countries. Lastly, the President agrees or vetoes laws made by Congress.
If you don't vote, the person you don't want may become the new President! So get to the voting booths and vote! Remember all these things and pick whoever you think should win!
Love, Your Daughter,
Kid Brillig
(Can I just say for the record how proud I am of her? I'm also excited to see she put He/She. We have come a long, long way.)
Kid Brillig has been an outspoken Democratic supporter since she first understood the whole "political party" thing. (She also is counting the days until she is old enough to legitimately participate here at DailyKos with her own UID :-)) Over the last few days she's stunned me with her grasp of how our government and of its electoral system works. Waaay better than Sarah Palin's! Or, sadly, many other Americans of voting age. Yes, my 10 year old knows:
* What the job of the Vice-President is without having to resort to a cheat sheet or make shit up go off-message.
* How the Electoral College works (more or less, she is only 10 after all :-))
* What the Magic Number is ("270, Mom, and Obama has that many easy, right?")
We voted this morning- KB wanted us to vote together, so even though today is a school holiday she got up same time as always so we could go before Mr. Brillig headed off to work. She marveled at the line at the polling place (we never have one of those), watched us mark our ballots, and understood that in the interest of fairness for all, she could not help us put our ballots into the scanner.
Over coffee (Starbucks gives free coffee to anyone who voted!) we talked of many things, such as why we left one spot blank- that of our Massachusetts State Senator. Richard Tisei is running unopposed for re-election. He's a Republican. And we wrote him a letter 6 years ago explaining why we could not in good conscience vote for him again.. he is willing to be represented by a party that is anathema to everything we believe in.
Kid Brillig is excited to be heading over in a few hours to work the Election Day bake sale at her school. We'll sell Rice Krispie Treats, cookies and coffee while talking about the system that she will be old enough to participate in in 2016. Then she'll head off to swim team, and by the time she gets through there Irish Patti will be here to watch the returns and celebrate with us. KB has asked to be allowed to stay up and watch some of the returns; yeah, we'll let her for a bit. This is bigger than the World Series in our house, and tonite is Game 7.
Go Red Sox Democrats!!!