One counting error

The Kids Voting 2000 elections in Missouri went off a lot smoother than did this year’s national presidential election.

But, even the kids voting tabulators made a counting error. The difference was the kids vote totals were corrected in a few hours, not weeks like in the presidential election.

Sometimes Missouri kids voted like adults in their home areas but sometimes they showed a mind of their own.

Young Saint Louis.com decided to do some comparisons between adult and kids voting in the areas where Kids Voting 2000 was held. 

The Kids Voting 2000 program in Missouri includes 20 school districts with over 150,000 kids involved. Nine of those districts are in the St. Louis metro area. 

The districts are St. Louis Public Schools, Ferguson-Florissant R-2, Ritenour, University City, Parkway C-2, Clayton, Rockwood R-V1, Mehlville R-IX and Fox C-6.

There also are eight Kansas City-area districts and two in mid-Missouri and one in southwest Missouri.

Professor Tim O’Rourke of the University of Missouri-St. Louis College of Education  coordinates the Kids Voting in Missouri. “Several of our districts achieved a better than 50% turnout at the polls,” he said.

He said he was “very satisfied” in view of the special efforts kids have to make to vote. The kids don’t just vote at their school. 

“What makes our program different is kids have to go to the same polling place as their parents or guardians,” O’Rourke said. Overall kids turnout was 43%, he said. 

Some interesting comparisons between adult and kids voting in metro St. Louis include:
 

• St. Louis County kids gave George W. Bush a slight 287-vote margin while adult St. Louis County voters were giving Al Gore a 51.4% to 46.2% majority. 
• St. Louis County adults and kids agreed on Mel Carnahan for the U.S. Senate. But, while John Ashcroft got 45.1% of the adult vote, he only got 32.0% of the kids vote. 
• County adults and kids both favored Bob Holden for governor by a narrow margin. 
• In the City of St. Louis, kids and adults voted predominately Democratic. However, in the U.S. Senate and governor’s race, kids showed more interest in minor party candidates. 
• For instance, kids gave 28% of their votes for the U.S. Senate to other candidates than Carnahan or Ashcroft. They gave nearly a third of their votes for governor to other than Holden and Talent. 
• Jefferson County adults favored Al Gore for president but kids liked George W. Bush. 
• In the U.S. Senate race, adults and kids both favored the Democrat but the kids were much more likely to vote for Mel Carnahan. 

The Kids Voting 2000 leaders in Missouri did many things to make the kids vote count go smoothly. For one thing, the ballot design was similar across the state. Also, the ballot could be marked in pencil so it could be read electronically. 

Votes from different parts of the state were tabulated at four state universities, University of Missouri-St. Louis, University of Missouri-Columbia, University of Missouri-Kansas City and Southwest Missouri State University in Springfield. 

All electronic vote totals were sent to UMSL, the headquarters of Kids Voting Missouri. The one error happened when one electronic file from Jefferson City was misplaced. 

O’Rourke said, “One steering committee member from Jeff City called in the morning after election day and said he thought there were more votes from his area. We looked, found the votes and made the correction that same day.” 

You can get a school district-by-district breakdown of the presidential, senate and governor’s race reading the vote summary which accompanies this article. 

Also, if you want to see all of the kids voting in all 20 Missouri districts, you can go to the Kids Voting website at http://kidsvoting.umsl.edu.

For complete Missouri adult voting results, go to the Secretary of State’s website at http://mosl.sos.state.mo.us.