Instructify

Aren’t elections awesome? In addition to getting kids excited about democracy, they can be a conduit to all kinds of projects. At one school, students held a mock election on voting machines running elections software built by computer science students. At another, students built an edible map of their town and looked at how local governmental policies could affect the town and, by extension, the food they were about to eat.

My pal, former high school math teacher Lee Creighton, has got the adult in me excited with a detailed breakdown of his local government’s recent “instant runoff” elections. In his look at how elections work, he discusses the merits of the simple majority, possible flaws in how the winner of the Heisman Trophy is selected, and how early exit polls can sway the results of an election when voters decide they don’t want to “waste their vote.” This thoughtful, thorough blog post could be the foundation of your next integrated math/social studies lesson plan, as you walk students through a variety of election types and have them work out the results. -ROSS WHITE

Cary’s Instant Runoff Elections: Fair?

photo by rochelle, et. al.