Kids Voting USA

Many adolescents in the United States reside in apolitical cocoons in which friends and parents rarely talk about public affairs. Everyday life is structured by exposure to music, online chat, and television, but news media are shunned. Thus, the problem of youth civic disengagement represents in part the quandary of how to circulate political communication within families and peer networks.

Prior studies on adults have described “obstinate audiences” and “chronic know nothings,” while less attention has been devoted to overcoming barriers in the diffusion of political stimulation among young citizens. However, the Kids Voting USA (KVUSA) curriculum has provided researchers with opportunities for exploring the interactions of schools, media, and families in the generation of political discussion.

KVUSA began as a pilot program in 1988 after three businessmen traveled to Costa Rica on a fishing trip and learned that voter turnout hovers around 90%. Voting is a family tradition in Costa Rica, as parents bring children to the polls. Curious as to whether family voting might lift turnout rates in the United States, the three men launched a pilot program in Tempe, Arizona. Kids Voting has since expanded to 29 states. In 2004, 1.5 million KVUSA students voted for president with ballots similar to those used by adults.

The nonprofit, nonpartisan organization comprises a national network of schools that enlist the help of election officials. K–12 teachers typically use lesson plans during the final weeks leading up to Election Day, with the goal of providing authentic activities that involve children in participatory citizenship. Along with voting, students develop media literacy from exercises such as decoding campaign advertisements. Students monitor the flow of news as they anticipate classroom debates, and they ensnare parents in a family voting guide.

The architecture of KVUSA is remarkable—from the perspective of political socialization theory—because it integrates so many agents of civic development: schools, peer groups, families, media, and elections. Such synergy generates counterintuitive outcomes, such as “trickle-up influence” in which children initiate political conversations with parents. This dynamic is most consequential in low-income families, where parents were often never socialized themselves to politics as youth. Spurred on by KVUSA, children provide parents with a second chance at citizenship.

Many parents respond defensively to their newly politicized children. Nonetheless, empirical studies have shown that the provocations of opinionated offspring motivate adults to take civic parenting more seriously. A boomerang effect occurs as parents encourage children to pay more attention to news, to acquire political knowledge, and to express opinions during classroom discussions.

The innovations of KVUSA are significant beyond theory. Since the 1960s, evaluations of civic curricula in the United States have generally concluded that schools are inconsequential in political socialization. Kids Voting illustrates that schools and families are potentially bridged through student-initiated discussion, with outcomes that benefit both children and parents.