Worried about the candidates this year? I’m eligible in 2040.

With this year’s presidential nominee candidates, you may be scared and thinking about moving away from the U.S. in the next few months. Maybe you have picked out a nice island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and are planning on hiding there until Donald Trump is out of office.

Fear not. There are some great future options—you just might have to wait until we’re old enough to be elected.

Delegate Rich Anderson (R-51) runs a “Future Delegate Program” to help get kids excited about democracy and public service. In this program you have to submit an application in December, and then you get a phone call to schedule a day during the legislative session.

Did you know that in Virginia our State Legislature is only in session from January to March? True story.

That means that most Delegates and State Senators have regular jobs, just like us, but then they come to Richmond for the session. The idea is that politicians in Virginia are “citizen legislators” which means they have to live under their own rules, so hopefully they make good ones.

That’s why you won’t find Delegate Anderson texting and driving. He made the rule that it’s the same as a DUI, and if he gets pulled over, he gets in trouble, just like the rest of us.

My day as a future delegate was Friday, February 19. We had to get up at a regular time for me (OCCS is in the pool at 6 a.m.), but most people would think that it was “early,” to drive to Richmond.

When we got there, Delegate Anderson wasn’t there- he was already in a meeting. But then he came down because he was hosting another program, “Art Day at the Capitol” so there were a few dozen people from schools in his district who made extraordinary art, which their teachers sent in to hang in the capitol during the session.

During that time, I got to see a lot of the art that they made. After the students presented their art, Delegate Anderson gave them a certificate with a pin and took a picture with them. A large part of being a politician seems to be getting your picture taken shaking people’s hands.

I think I would need a lot of Purell.

After talking to the artists, I joined their group and we went to the capitol gallery to watch a session. In the session Delegate Anderson voted on there being a state clean water day, homeschoolers being allowed to play VHSL sports (note: Governor McAuliffe, I think you really screwed up on that one), and several other procedural votes. It was pretty fast.

 

They did something called a “block” where instead of voting on each bill separately, because they’d actually just been changed slightly by the senate and the house had already voted on them, they voted on a chunk of bills at once. Fortunately, both Clean Water Day and State BBQ Day passed. Yum.

After the voting ended, I was able to leave the artists behind and go on the legislative floor with Delegate Anderson for (you guessed it!) pictures! When the pictures were finished and I had perfected my smile, Delegate Anderson introduced me to some lobbyists. Lobbyists are people who give the Delegates advice on one side of an issue that is important to the people they represent.

I think I could do that. I’m very persuasive- once I got my brother to give me his iPod so that I could play it by telling him I’d get him a new song and that it would take awhile so he should go play legos. It took him about an hour to find out that I just wanted to play Minecraft.

Next I had lunch at Merriweathers on the Capitol. They had some really good Asian chicken salad.

After lunch, I took a tour of the capital. I’ve actually been on the capitol tour about six times, but I learned a lot more about the way the building progressed from the original structure following a roof collapse and the expansion to make it larger.

My favorite part of the tour is when we go into a room with the picture of Pocahontas and John Smith. I like the artwork about the beginning of Virginia.

There’s one painting that takes up the whole wall showing the Revolutionary War, but it has George Washington there and he wasn’t at the battle that’s shown. It also shows the French ships in the background keeping the British from getting supplies and allowing the Americans to win- which makes sense because it was painted by a Frenchman.

After the tour, I went to Delegate Anderson’s office and we talked about some of the ways that they vote on the floor. How sometimes they vote on bills that are identical or block vote, or how people can use “Rule 69” to abstain from a vote.

We talked a bit about why he likes being a delegate- he thinks that it’s really important that we have strong state legislators to make sure that if Congress makes bad laws the people who live in our states can prevent us from being impacted by them too much. He likes to help people, and he really likes to talk to people.

After my day as a “future delegate” I think that it would be awesome to work in the state legislature one day. I would like to make a difference for Virginia by making rules preventing people from cutting down forests and making new rules so that places like gas stations and dry cleaners didn’t leech chemicals into the ground so that our home state stays beautiful and safe.

Also, it would be important to me to not have the Electoral College so that everyone’s vote counted for president. I don’t think you do that in the state legislature, so maybe I’d have to run for congress, too. And I guess if you’re going to run for congress, you may as well run for governor. And a lot of governors go on to run for president.

So- if you’re worried about the candidates this year, I’m eligible in 2040. I’ll see you at the polls.

Riley Kotlus is 12 years old and in 6th grade. He’s always at school, because school is at home, but he is also an active Boy Scout and member of OCCS swim.