Simulated experiences provide people with a chance to experience reality. They may include the campaign experience, giving participants a chance to play candidates, campaign managers, spokespersons, and volunteers, NGO activists, and journalists. The simulation can also demonstrate the election experience from preparation of the polling station through to the counting of the ballots, from the perspective of poll workers, voters, election monitors, and party agents.
These experiences take place in an environment controlled by the educator. People do not learn to ride bicycles by watching how to ride: they learn by actually practising on a bicycle. So too, an effective way to educate voters about the practical ins and outs of campaigns and elections elections and voting is by creating a real situation where citizens have an actual experience.
Mock elections, games, and role plays are ways to provide people with real experiences. They usually form part of a workshop programme and provide an opportunity for people to work in an interactive and participatory manner. The real success of the activities will depend on the way in which they are facilitated and debriefed. It is not enough to simply have the activity. Educators need to facilitate a discussion with the participants about their feelings and opinions as well as the relevance of the experience to their own situations.
Mock Elections
These are used to create a situation in a workshop that is a replica of a polling station, but which will allow people to explore the realities of this situation in a safe environment. One of the reasons that mock elections can be so effective is that they are able to demystify the election process. First-time voters will be eager to discover the practical workings of voting and election procedures. Mock elections will empower them to know what can be expected.
People need to be aware from the outset that the simulation is not the real thing and does not take the place of going to the polling stations on election day.
Care needs to be taken to create a picture in people's minds of the scene of elections before launching into the exercize. This will make the situation as real as possible and clarify in people's minds the process they are about to undergo. Near the time of elections, people unfamiliar with voting can have many of their concerns laid to rest by going through a simulated voting experience.
As people go through the experience, the voter educator should factor in unforseen possibilities to alert citizens to situations that are not in the textbook but that may well arise. Situations of conflict between voters themselves, between voters and officials, or instances of cheating and bribery must be considered, and options for dealing with them need to be discussed.
Setting up a mock election need not take much time or money. Simple, inexpensive materials may be used to create a very real situation. The polling station can be set up in a workshop venue or even outside. This method of conveying information to people will also allow the voter educator to stop and start the process at strategic points to give people a more in depth explanation of why the process happens in the way it does.
Mock elections are most effectively used amongst groups unfamiliar with the procedures preceding elections and on election day itself. In transitional contexts, mock elections can happen on a large scale and aim to reach as many people as possible.
Educators should use what they have: any box with a lid can serve as a suitable illustration of a ballot box. The point to highlight about ballot boxes is the need for them to be sealed and remain that way until they reach the counting station. Voter education programmes can make their own dummy ballot papers with fabricated parties and candidates. If the activity is being undertaken by or in cooperation with an election authority, actual election materials may be lent for the purposes of the activity.
Role Plays
Role play is a much-used technique in educational events based on the principles of experiential learning. Trainers do not always have to get learners to reflect on past experience: they can construct experiences for them in the workshop situation. A good way of doing this is through role play.
Role play requires participants to put themselves in somebody else's boots. For a while, they suspend their real identity and take on another role. For this reason, role play is a particularly good tool for developing empathy and getting people to understand other points of view. It is also a useful way for people to practice a new skill in an imaginary situation.
There are many different ways of conducting role plays in a workshop, ranging from complete improvisation to acting according to a carefully developed brief. Sometimes all participants can get involved in playing a few similar roles. Alternatively, a role play can involve all participants playing different roles. The purpose of the exercize must determine the most appropriate approach.
Examples of Role Plays
Communication Skills.
You are conducting a training session on communication skills. You divide all your participants into pairs and instruct one partner to play the role of a parent and the other partner to play the role of an angry, rebellious teenage child. You could keep your brief as simple as that and allow participants the freedom to spontaneously act out any situation that comes to mind. Or you could expand the brief a little and, for example, describe a situation where the teenager insists on going out with some friends and the parent does not approve. In a role play such as this you do not want participants to "learn" the bad behaviour of the teenager, but somebody must play this role in order to give the parent an opportunity to practice his communication skills. It is useful to interrupt the pairs after a few minutes and get participants to swop roles. It can also be a good idea to form groups of three (rather than pairs) and have one participant observe and comment on the behaviour of those playing the roles.
Individual Roles.
At the end of a voter education workshop you run a mock election in which all participants play a different role. Everybody receives a role card with detailed instructions on the role they must play. The role cards indicate not only the part each person should play, but also how the role must be played (for example a lazy election official who does not check voters' identity or entry on the voters' list carefully, or a drunk voter who disrupts the queue). After all participants have read and understood their briefs, you allow the role play to begin. There is room for spontaneous acting, but you have structured the roles quite carefully to ensure that the mock election follows a certain course. If the simulation or role-play is part of a school based programme or voter education curriculum rather than a single workshop, for example, the scope of the activity can be expanded to include the campaign period. If limited time is available, however, educators will want to keep the exercize manageable and focused.
Deroling
After a role play is over, it is very important to "derole" the participants. Sometimes it is sufficient to thank people for entering into the spirit of the exercise and then invite them to return to their normal seats and resume their real identity. However, particularly when people have taken their roles very seriously and when the situations have been fairly intense, it is often necessary to derole more carefully. Ask people to take off any costumes they may have worn, get opposing parties (e.g. parents and teenagers) to shake hands, do somethng to help everyone relax and accept that the exercize is over. It is important to derole to avoid a particular role from sticking to a participant (or group of participants) for the remainder of the workshop.
Debriefing
Having created a common experience for participants in a workshop, it is important to ensure that the learning cycle is completed. Experience on its own is not enough. You should allow sufficient time for reflection after the role play. First let participants recall what took place in the role play (the "identification" step). The comments of observers can be particularly useful here. Then encourage people to analyse what happened. Then draw out the lessons that they have learned and that they feel can be applied in similar life situations.
Things to Remember while Conducting Role Plays
Be sure to set the scene very carefully before the role play begins. Role play instructions can be quite complex. It is important that everyone understands what is going on, otherwise the experience can be quite confusing. If necessary, write out the scenario in which the role play will take place, or provide role cards for individual participants.
Do not let the role play go on too long. Remember that people are acting and that the situation can become quite forced (or alternatively just fizzle out) if you lose track of time. In the case of elaborate role plays with multiple parts designed to illustrate numerous issues, it can be useful to use the "stop-start" technique. Stop the exercize after a few minutes, discuss what has happened, and then resume the action. If necessary, you can stop and start several times.
Encourage participants to be true to their roles and to avoid stereotyping. Role play requires a good deal of sensitivity as people try to enter into the minds and experience of others. Stereotypes tend to confirm prejudice rather than facilitate learning. The point is not to go overboard with acting, but to succeed in seeing the world from a different point of view. As the trainer, always be open to see how role plays develop. Assist participants in their reflection on the experience (through observing what happened and asking questions), but be sure to let people derive their own points of learning. You cannot dictate what is meaningful to people, nor impose what they should learn.
Games
In voter education, games are a much-used to tool to illustrate many aspects of elections. As mock elections and role plays create a virtual reality of polling stations and the voting procedures, games assist potential voters with the importance of voting, the rights, freedoms and responsibilities of the voter, attitude to other voters and electoral officials in an interactive an participatory way.
In some games, people may have to practice listening to what people are saying instead of assuming what some one is going to say based on prejudiced ideas of political or religious affiliation, or gender and age.
