If you have a den of 10 or less, you may consider conducting this activity with the Cub Scouts and all their family members or ask the Cubmaster if you can conduct this activity at a pack meeting or event.
Before the meeting:
- Become familiar with the voting concepts of majority and plurality.
- Majority means that to win a vote the candidate must receive more than 50% of the vote, this represents the majority. The benefit of a majority vote is that the majority of people get what they voted for. The potential challenge with a majority vote is when there are multiple candidates or topics, and a lot of people involved it may be difficult and/or take a lot of time to get a majority of people to agree on one candidate or topic. It may take several votes to get to a majority with no guarantee a majority will ever be reached. Conducting elections on a large scale is very costly.
- Plurality is a system of voting, common in democracies, where the candidate who receives the most votes wins the vote, this is most common when there are more than two candidates on a ballot. The benefit of a plurality vote is that chances are greater that at least one person or topic will receive the most votes. Plurality votes usually only take one vote. The potential challenge is that people who are voting expecting a majority vote may feel like their vote didn’t have an impact.
- The President of the United States is elected using a combination of majority and plurality system called the electoral college. Several states use majority voting to assign their electoral votes. In total there are 538 electoral votes and to win a presidential election the candidate must receive the majority of those electoral votes which is 270.
During the meeting:
- Explain that Cub Scouts will elect a denner today Remind Cub Scouts that the purpose of this is to explore the difference between majority and plurality voting that everyone in the den will eventually have the chance to serve as the denner and that this vote is just to see who the denner will be for the next meeting. For the purpose of this activity even if someone has served as the denner previously they can still run for the position and serve again.
- Tell the Cub Scouts that; “First we have to decide who wants to serve as denner. The first part of most elections begins with what is called a nomination. This is where people recommend someone for the position by nominating them, if the person wants to run for the position, they accept the nomination. If the person does not want to run for the position, they can refuse the nomination.”
- Allow Cub Scouts to start nominating other members of the den for the position of denner. When someone is nominated by another Cub Scout, ask if they want to accept or deny the nomination, if they accept then place them on the ballot.
- Continue to allow nominations until at least three candidates have been nominated and accepted. It is important to have at least three candidates to give a greater chance that not one candidate will receive the majority of votes. The lesson is more powerful when Cub Scouts realize that there are times when majority voting doesn’t give results right away or may cause a tie that cannot be broken. Plurality voting is more likely to give a result right away and prevents stalemate situations that keep any one candidate from winning.
- Allow Cub Scouts who are running for denner give a brief reason why they want to be the denner.
- After the nominees have given their brief speech conduct the vote.
- Hand out a slip of paper and pencil to each Cub scout and have them write the name of the person they are voting for on the paper and turn it in to you. Tell them that this is a secret ballot so no one will know who you voted for.
- Count the votes and post the results.
- Explain to Cub Scouts that we can decide who won the election in one of two ways. The two most common methods are majority and plurality. Plurality is when the person who received the most votes wins. Majority is when someone must have the majority of the votes which is more than half the votes to win.
- Discuss the results.
- Is there someone who received the most votes (plurality)?
- Is there someone who received the majority of votes (majority)?
- Explain to Cub Scouts – Imagine if this was an election where there were thousands or millions of voters. There is a lot of time, money, and energy it takes to conduct an election and it can be a drain of resources to keep conducting an election until there is a majority.
- Based on this election who do you think should be the denner?
