Marysville kids say the darndest things about the election

Published 10:00 pm Wednesday, November 9, 2016

MARYSVILLE — If Alex Morales was president, he would want everyone to be fair to each other.

The fourth-grader at Sunnyside Elementary in Marysville has been learning about politics. On election night, his parents made him keep his usual 8:30 bedtime, but when he woke up Wednesday, his mom told him that Donald Trump had won.

Alex knows the president serves for four years. His sense of the job is that it involves a lot of speeches.

He and most of his classmates had voted for Hillary Clinton in a national mock election for children days earlier. Alex was worried about what would happen to Mexican-American families, he said.

One table over, fourth-grader Eden Wilscam pumped her fist for a Trump presidency. Her parents filled out their ballots Tuesday night before her gymnastics class, she said.

“I wanted Trump because I didn’t want Clinton,” she said. “She ignored like 20,000 emails she needed to be president.”

Eden’s understanding of the electoral college is that it represents the majority, she said.

An electoral vote “would be a color, like red would be Trump the Republican … like if they have 35 on red, 35 electoral votes were for Trump.”

Eden and her friends had talked before the election about their dream president, she said. They decided on Darth Vader or the Minions.

Her tablemate Troy Rodriguez, who is in third grade, voted in the mock election for Libertarian Gary Johnson. Troy watched the news with his grandmother Wednesday morning before school. Trump won because “he got the two best states,” Troy said.

As class started, Troy was typing numbers into his calculator so it read “Hello” when turned upside down.

“I know why it’s important to vote,” he said. “If nobody votes, then what’s the operation? It’s nothing. It can’t run.”

The president is the boss of the country, Troy said. They can make laws but not right away, because “they have to have Congress and stuff.”

Fourth-grader Andre Davydenko voted for Trump because he couldn’t support Clinton, he said.

“I don’t like her. I don’t know why,” he said. “She wants us to to go to war with two countries, Africa and Asia, and also Trump said he is going to send Hillary to jail.”

Alicia Cordero, also in fourth grade, got to stay up until 11 p.m. watching election coverage. She was not happy when Clinton lost Florida.

“People said she was a liar, but Trump was going to build a wall,” she said.

Alicia’s parents reminded her to stay calm about politics and always to vote. If you don’t vote, you can’t complain, but kids can complain a little, they told her.

“We have to agree with him because he’s our new president,” she said.

Regardless of their votes, both boys and girls said they’d like to see a woman elected president someday. Several said they wanted candidates who could focus on helping the homeless.

Eden, glancing up from her Captain Underpants novel, said she was looking forward to not paying attention to campaigns for a while. Andre said he would rather have what Eden suggested, the Minion White House.

The conversation then turned to what changes to that landmark the yellow blob-like cartoon characters might bring.

John Melcher, a fourth-grader in a NASA T-shirt, said his dad was more interested in the election than he was.

“I’m not into politics,” he said. “I’m just a kid.”

Rikki King: 425-339-3449; rking@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @rikkiking.