1. Getting on the Ballot
Although the procedure is different in every state, our candidate will complete activities to get signatures. We'll make these activities relatively easy since we want them to get past this stage, but there is the possibility of not succeeding and having to start over.
2. Fundraising for the Primaries
An activity step; they earn a certain amount of money for each activity successfully completed to be used in Step #3.
3. Campaigning the States
An activity step. Bigger states have more delegates but are also more expensive to campaign (each state has a campaign "price tag" proportional to the number of delegates). The students have the option to choose which states they go to, but it is possible to run out of money. There will be five activities for each state; if they answer three correctly, they win that state. Each state campaign is followed by the primary for that state (#4), then on to the next state.
4. Primaries
No activity. After the campaign in their state, the registered voters in that state vote within their party to "tell" their delegates who to vote for at the Nominating Convention. If the students successfully completed the Campaign activities for that state, the delegates will vote for them here.
5. Nominating Convention
They already know how they've done in the campaigning/primary stages, so this is more a summary and evaluation step, with no activities. Assuming they won, the screen might say "You've won in four out of five states. The Democratic Party throws you a big party. It's called the Nominating Convention." Displays which states you campaigned in, how many delegates they send, how many votes you got, with a tally
Utah has 4 delegates...you won Utah, so you get 4 votes 4
Arizona has 3 delegates...you won Arizona, so you get 3 votes 3
Florida has 4 delegates...you won Florida, so you get 4 votes 4
Delaware has 2 delegates...you didn't win Delaware 0
You won 11 votes from your party
We'd have a certain cutoff number...if they don't reach it, they don't get nominated and have to start over.
6. Fundraising Option
They get a certain amount of money from the federal government or have the option to continue fundraising. As in Step #2, each activity successfully completed earns them a certain amount of money.
7. Campaigning the States
Similar to Step #3, they use the money earned in Step #6 to campaign. They will have to choose which states they will visit; price tags" will be higher.
8. Popular Vote
No activity. Registered voters vote for the candidate they like best.
9. Electoral Vote
No activity. Electors, selected by the voters in each state, officially elect the president and vice president. The number of electors in each state is equal to its number of representatives in both houses of Congress.
10. Inauguration
No activity, end of game. President sworn in, "Hail to the Chief" plays.
We've decided that making the election process as realistic as possible is one of our priorities. We don't want to leave out steps like the Nominating Convention, which is essentially a formality, since it's something the students would be exposed to in a real election and should therefore understand. Because of this concern, we've included the prerequisite step of getting on the ballot in each state. (We also didn't want to focus on money too much by starting off with the fundraising step.) We've also included the possibility of not advancing at Steps #1, 2, 5, 6, and 10, since a real candidate might drop out (or be forced to) after the results of any of these steps.
We're concerned about the amount of information we're throwing at the students and the fact that they will probably get really involved in the activities at each step. We are considering having a ladder/road showing their success at each Political Advisor (transition) step to bring them back to the game and give them context.
We also want to make sure that the activities we have them do are more than just "drill-and-kill" questions. We are struggling for a balance between the teacher's request for fact recognition, our desire to keep the program fun, and what we feel is our educational responsibilities to have them engaging in higher thought processes. In an effort to reconcile these factors, we've decided to have the activities (which will be randomly generated according to difficulty level) include: trivia questions, mazes where only the correct path of events wins the activity, puzzles with pictures of famous people who they have to identify, quotes/political cartoons from the time period where they have to analyze what is really being said (we'd give them multiple-choice options).
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