DATE: Thursday, November 6, 1997            TAG: 9711060450

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A15  EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY KIA MORGAN ALLEN, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:   71 lines

BEACH, NORFOLK STUDENTS VOICE THEIR OWN OPINION IN ELECTIONS

Blake Darby got the jitters when he walked into the cafeteria of Kemps Landing Magnet School. He was ready to vote for his favorite candidate and the pressure was on.

With the cafeteria converted into a polling station, Darby positioned himself at a poll booth and asked:

``Should I vote for this guy or this guy?''

This was serious business. And after all the political weighing he did over the past weeks, Darby couldn't decide for whom to cast his ballot.

He finally decided on Donald S. Beyer Jr.

The novice voter was one of thousands of young Virginians who participated in a program called Kids Voting Virginia, a chapter of the national project Kids Voting USA.

The program, which includes lessons on democracy and voter participation, offers students the opportunity to go to the polls with their parents and cast their own votes which will be tallied and reported.

The Norfolk and Virginia Beach school systems participated in the program this year and 18,235 of the 120,000 students voted.

In Virginia Beach, James S. Gilmore III beat out Beyer - 7,486 votes to 5,632. Beyer won in Norfolk, 2,576 to 1,699.

``It's a wonderful experience for kids to be voting with their parents,'' said Joanne Taylor, executive director of Kids Voting Virginia.

Before Kids Voting, Taylor said students voted in class. But now, ``They go into the precinct, where they vote as adults,'' she said. ``It's so much closer to what they're gonna do the rest of their lives. And by the time they're 18, they're not going to be intimidated by the process.''

And some students at Kemps Landing took the issues as seriously as folks more than twice their age.

Whitney Coates watched the news, listened to the debates and with the backing of her civics class, knew enough about the gubernatorial campaign to conclude that Beyer would be better to fill the seat.

Disappointed at the outcome, Coates, 13, said even though her vote ``really didn't count,'' the process made her a more informed teen.

``Later on we will have to do this for real,'' she said, ``and the decision I make now will affect my future.''

A campaign advertisement claiming that cutting the car tax would hurt education prompted Charmel Jenkins, 11, to go to the polls.

However, William Davis, 11, wasn't taken by the advertisements and other political propaganda.

``The commercials don't do anything. They're basically wasting their money,'' he said.

Another student, Demetria Penix agreed.

``Sometimes it's so confusing because they are trying to slash each other to get you to vote for their candidate,'' she said.

Roberto Piraino, however, preferred Gilmore over Beyer because he had a ``sunnier smile.'' But when it came to the issues, he backed the candidate that stood his ground.

``At first I was going to vote for Beyer, but he started switching issues,'' he said. ``I wanted somebody who would stick with what they wanted to do.''

Piraino, 12, even went a step further to ensure that he was picking the best candidate, and not mom and dad's pick. He created a pro- and con-list for each candidate.

The students also said that their makeshift voting power would influence their parents to use their voting voice.

``I heard that the percentage of people that voted was down,'' said Davis. ``This (Kids Voting) is a great way to get that percentage back up.'' ILLUSTRATION: STEVE EARLEY/The Virginian-Pilot

Charmel Jenkins, 11, a sixth-grader at Kemps Landing Magnet School

in Virginia Beach, voted Tuesday as part of the Kids Voting Virginia

program. KEYWORDS: ELECTION VOTING

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