500 youths turn out for Kids Vention

Valerie Miller

Wednesday, Jan. 26, 2000 | 10:12 a.m.

It's election time again and there are some promising candidates. But this is no ordinary convention. These delegates have to be home before bedtime.

Close to 500 children from 10 schools attended the valley's first political convention for children Tuesday, "Kids Vention 2000 -- Future Voices," at Mandalay Bay's House of Blues.

Politicians including Nevada State Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa, Las Vegas City Council members Lawrence Weekly and Lynette Boggs McDonald, County Commissioner Lance Malone and State Assemblyman David Goldwater showed up to encourage the students to take an active interest in politics.

"I think that it is very important to get young people excited about government, especially when recent presidential elections have been decided by less than 50 percent of the vote, and some municipal elections have been decided by less than 30 percent," Boggs McDonald said.

Participants in the Kids Vention hoped it would stem the tide of low voter turnout by young people in elections.

"We need to teach kids to get involved now," Weekly said. "The reason the voter record among the young is so low is that as adults, we get so busy that we don't take time to expose kids to politics. I think we'll see some of our future leaders come out of here."

Children in attendance were from a variety of middle schools and junior and senior high schools. The students elected two delegates to go to Kids Vention 2000 in San Jose, where the first such convention was held in 1994 as an offshoot of the Kids Voting program.

The students also watched politicians debate issues, then voted on them, deciding among themselves such items as whether pagers and cellular phones should be allowed in schools and whether restrictions should be placed on young drivers.

The Kids Vention seemed to be a success, according to the young attendees. "It was really cool because I learned much more about politics," O'Callaghan Middle School seventh-grader Toni-Marie Piscani said after the convention. "If they have another next year, I'll definitely be back. Kids need to get involved in politics, because the future is for us."

Organizers hope to hold Kids Vention annually, according to Cynthia Dunn, a community affairs director with KLAS Channel 8, which help put on the event with Kids Voting Nevada/Clark County.

"We all know politics doesn't just happen on Election Day," Dunn said. "It's something that effects our lives 365 days a year."