Rocking the Vote

Whywait for Nov. 4 to vote—or to be of legal age to do so? Anyone who steps through the doors of the National Constitution Center (NCC) in Philadelphia is invited to cast a ballot for the next U.S. president, whether it’s a senior wearing a "Veteran for McCain" baseball cap or a toddler in a "My Mama’s for Obama" onesie.

NCC is targeting citizens of all ages with its slate of election-year events, regardless of whether they can enter a voting booth this fall. While it was just finding its footing in 2004, the center has seized this election year as a chance to reposition its role from a museum to a mecca of civic engagement with its yearlong series, "Election ’08: The Power of We." Along with literally bringing the candidates into the museum, NCC, which opened five years ago as the only museum devoted to the U.S. Constitution, has used every tool at its disposal to energize the American public—and youths in particular—about the political process.

Foremost in this effort is the Youth Voter Registration Initiative, the quest of the museum, along with a host of other organizations, to double the number of registered 18-year-old voters in Philadelphia, only 18 percent of whom were registered in 2004. Programming staff visit local high schools and cast students in an interactive presentation. "Kids get to be different components of the political campaign. They get to be a campaign manager, voters, newspaper reporters . . . all the different roles that they play," explains Kerry Sautner, director of public programs. Students then engage in various campaign initiatives, such as developing party platforms, creating campaign commercials and staging a debate.

Once the youths take in the excitement of a mock electoral process, NCC urges them to get involved with the real one. "The show gives kids a fun educational version of what goes on behind a political campaign," says Sautner, "but then we tell them, ‘All this doesn’t matter unless you go out there and vote, so let’s get you guys registered to vote right now.’" Staff then walk students through the voter registration forms, which they file on the youths’ behalf.

The initiative kicked off in February, with a goal of visiting each of the more than 60 high schools in Philadelphia. As of July, NCC had visited 25 high schools and had reached nearly 3,000 students. When the 2008–09 school year begins in September, the program will hold registration open houses throughout the city, in libraries, malls and community centers.

The chance to play politics also is a fundamental element of what Steve Frank, vice president of education and exhibits, calls the centerpiece of NCC’s campaign: "Headed to the White House," a 3,000-square-foot exhibition debuting on Constitution Day, Sept. 17, and running through the inauguration of the next U.S. president on Jan. 20. After walking through a projected image of the White House, visitors enter role-playing areas where they can try on the hats of candidates, political reporters or everyday citizens volunteering on a campaign. They can practice delivering a speech with the help of a computerized coach or pick up a ringing phone to find out what they, as campaign managers, need to do to solve a crisis situation.

"Headed to the White House" is primarily geared toward middle-school students. "We have a large educational mission and we think that a museum’s ability to inspire young people is a very important aspect of what we do," Frank explains. "I do think that there’s potential to have an impact that’s kind of unique for a student audience because we can reach them not only here in the museum but also in the classrooms."

"Relevance is the holy grail of museum programming, and the election has given us an opportunity to develop programming that has an impact on the biggest issue in the country today: who should become the next president of the United States," he adds. "We’ve programmed around the presidential election to deliver our core message—that our constitutional democracy rests not only on the consent of the governed, but on the active participation of all citizens."

Starting in July, visitors got a jumpstart on Election Day via a voting machine stationed in the sweeping Grand Hall Lobby of the center, located on Independence Mall two blocks from the Liberty Bell. Giant plastic tubes in this "Election Central" quickly filled up with tinted golf balls—color-coded to match each candidate—to visually represent where visitors’ alliances lay.

Third-party votes are welcome, but if that’s not a broad enough medium for diverse opinions, visitors can tack handwritten notes on talkback panels, responding to questions posed by museum staff. "That’s been really gratifying," says Frank. "Every day the boards, which are gigantic—six or seven feet tall by three feet wide, and there are two of them—are literally covered with Post-it notes and responses." The first question asked what leadership qualities people wanted to see in the next president. The top replies: truthfulness and strength of character.

In daily presentations of "Elections from Start to Finish," delivered from a stage in the lobby, museum staff put on short demonstrations highlighting the election process in general and the 2008 campaign specifically, displaying images such as the electoral map as well as clips from speeches and the results of primaries. This includes the nationally broadcast April 16 Democratic presidential candidate debate between Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama; with some 10 million viewers, it was the most-watched debate of the 2008 election cycle. It is also one of several campaign events that was held at NCC this year: Obama delivered a speech on race at the center in March, and Sen. John McCain held a town hall meeting there in June.

Hosting the speeches and debates was an "enormous undertaking," Frank recalls. The museum brought in area students to help set up for the events—and to give them a rare behind-the-scenes peek at a major political undertaking.

But the center isn’t containing its educational outreach to city limits. "The Exchange" is NCC’s Web-based video roundtable, hosted by MTV News correspondent Suchin Pak, that provides an online, real-time forum for high school students to deliberate on constitutional issues. In May, six Philadelphia classes came into the center and "met" with seven schools from around the country to devise a student agenda for the next president to follow. "The challenge we laid in front of them was to have a national conversation and deliberate the top five issues important to high school students coming to the presidential election," says Eli Lesser, director of education. They turned out to be education, the economy, the war in Iraq, the environment and health care, in no particular order. While the students didn’t take positions on these issues initially, when they reunite for a second Exchange on Sept. 23 they will examine the candidates’ stances on the agenda items and determine their own opinions thereof.

Thirteen schools participated in the May Exchange; some 150 others watched the live broadcast on NCC’s website. But since the center wants to speak for high school students as a whole, it needs to engage even more of this population. It is thus partnering with education book publisher Scholastic Inc. to launch an application on Facebook, the social networking site that is integral to most high school students’ daily routines. The application randomly pairs macro and micro issues—education and mandatory school uniforms, for example—and asks users to click on the one they consider more important.

After adding the application to their Facebook profiles, members ages 13 to 18 can begin to vote. Lesser hopes to retrieve data from thousands of students, which the center will then combine with the issues discussed at the September Exchange and send to each candidate as a political agenda representing American high schools.

Why include 13-year-olds in this experiment, since they not only cannot vote in this year’s election but will also be too young in 2012? The youth contingent has proved vital in getting friends and family who are of voting age into the booths. "If you think back to during the primaries, when Caroline Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama, she said it was because her kids came to her and said, ‘This is who you need to vote for,’" Lesser says. When the Youth Voter Registration Initiative staff encounter students too young to vote in the next election, they give the youths several registration forms to bring back into the community and deliver to unregistered cohorts. Sautner recalls an anti-cigarette campaign in the 1980s and 1990s that targeted the children of smokers rather than the smokers themselves. "They found that if your kid harasses you, you’ll quit," she explains, adding that the same concept applies to voting. "The guilt treatment from youth is great!"

Involving youths at all stages of the political game also reinforces one of NCC’s key messages: Though voting for president is the country’s single most inclusive act of citizenship, engagement in American politics should not be limited to once every four years. "What we tell young people is voting is only one part of a presidential election," Lesser notes. "Being an active citizen is very important. Even between elections, you can choose to participate."

The same goes for American museums, according to Frank. "The longing for narratives that unite us, narratives capable of sustaining cultures of citizenship, transcends the presidential election," he said during a panel on the civic mission of museums at the 2008 AAM Annual Meeting. "And museums can and should be the forums where those longed-for bonds of civic connection are formed."—Joelle Seligson