Take Your Child To Vote Day

Well, you've heard of "Take Your Son or Daughter To Work Day," now it appears that Sen. Rosalind Kurita wants to extend this idea to the ballot box. Sen. Kurita introduced, and just passed, a joint resolution (SJR604) urging parents to take their young children into the voting booth with them, in order to get them engaged in the civic process.

According to Sen. Kurita, "we have to work harder at promoting Civic Responsibility, and we need to do a better job at pushing the idea that we do have to work at this." Sen. Kurita feels that if we engage children early on in their lives, it will encourage their civic involvement in the future.

While currently there is no enforcement mechanism in the bill to promote this idea, Sen. Kurita said she did speak with Brook Thompson of the Tennessee Election Commission, to have her him inform county election commissions of this effort, so that they might also encourage people to bring their children in with them while they vote.

This sort of reminds me of one of the grassroots organizers for Obama, Megan Morton, who took her young daughters with her to vote at the straw poll this Tuesday, and they were extremely excited to vote for Barack Obama, having seen their mother so actively engaged in the campaign. Too bad more voters aren't as excited about the electoral process as her daughters were.