"Buy My Vote" Gameshow - IUPUI, IN

For National Week of Action, our IUPUI DM Chapter wanted to do something fun and interactive with the students. We reserved about a month in advance a table and a few chairs for Nov. 14^th and Nov. 15^th from 10:00 am-1:00 pm in a central location of campus where many students hang out. We then met as a small committee of about 5 to brainstorm ideas. We knew we wanted to capture the interests of students in a fun way that would get our message across, so one of our members came up with the idea of a game show.

We tossed ideas back and forth and decided to name the game show “Buy My Vote.” We wanted to do an auction format in which someone would play the emcee, two students play politicians, and another student play a corporation. In order to get IUPUI students involved, we planned to ask them to participate by giving them the Democracy Dollars so they could bid against the corporation for the politicians vote. At this point, we were still a little fuzzy on the plans, but we decided we would present this to all of our members at our next meeting a week before the events to hash out the details.

A week before the events, we had a regular meeting where we discussed a few more details for the game show, and we asked if anyone wanted to commit to certain roles. We planned what we could say, and I printed off an example of a script from a street theater put on by another DM campus that we could work off of and make it our own. At the meeting, we made props for the game show, such as two “for sale” price tags to hang around the politicians’ necks, a big check in the amount of $50 million for the corporation, and a poster displaying the title of the game show.

A day before the events began, I sent reminder emails to those who said they would help out and to all students to ask them to come out and support us. A couple people who had volunteered were unable to attend, so we knew we needed to keep things flexible in order for them to work.

On Nov. 14^th, we had about 8 members show up to help with the game show. We reorganized who was going to play what role, got out our props, and commenced to get IUPUI students to play. We started out a little slow and tried working out the kinks so that students would bid against the corporation for the politicians, but students were a little confused by the process. We modified and simplified our original game plan so that students would have to choose just one politician rather than bid for one against the corporation.

The new game show began with us asking students to play a quick game that would only take 2 minutes of their time. The emcee would then ask about an issue they cared about and asked the student to vote for one politician after a short debate about that issue. Once the student announced who he/she would vote for, the corporation sneaks in and presents the $50 million check to the candidate and states they will give the politician their money only if they do the exact opposite they just promised the student they would do.

The students who participated got the message, and thought the skit was pretty funny. We told them about DM and asked them to sign the FENA petition to support legislation that would stop this problem. We had around 40 students in total play the game show, which drew in quite a large crowd. Our members really got into their roles, which I think helped keep up the excitement and draw others to watch.

On Nov. 15^th, we were a few students shy of putting on the whole production of the game show, so we decided to actively ask students to sign the FENA petition. Overall both days were pretty successful, with the game show probably attracting the most attention. This event was also a good way for our members to get involved and to feel empowered by getting other students to care about clean elections. This event was a lot of fun, and I think we did some great work, too!

Caridad Ax
Campus Coordinator
Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)