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Lesson plan Grade 10 Social Studies & Civics

Who Votes in the Ottermoor Irrigation District?

A grade 10 lesson comparing acreage voting with resident voting in a fictional irrigation district, using vote shares and assessment shares students calculate.

Objectives

  1. Students will calculate vote shares under an acreage rule and under a one-adult-one-vote rule.
  2. Students will explain the justification for tying votes to land in a district funded by acreage assessments.
  3. Students will evaluate who is affected by a district decision but holds no vote in it.

Vocabulary

Special district
A local government created to do one job, such as delivering water. It has its own board and its own budget, separate from the city or county.

Also: assessment, acreage voting, apportionment, seepage, board of directors

Teacher overview

Most American local governments elect their officials on a one-person-one-vote basis, yet a category of special-purpose water and irrigation districts elects boards by land ownership instead, so a vote follows an acre rather than a person. Courts have allowed that arrangement for districts whose costs are assessed on land and whose powers are narrow, while general-purpose city and county governments must apportion by population. This lesson uses a fictional district to make the arithmetic of that rule visible: students calculate vote shares and assessment shares under both rules, then judge a canal decision that reaches households holding no vote at all. The lesson therefore opens by separating general-purpose governments from special-purpose districts, before any calculation begins.

Procedure

Framing the two rules (8 min). Ask students how their city council seats are apportioned, and establish that population is the basis. Then introduce the fictional Ottermoor Irrigation District, which elects its five directors by giving each landowner one vote for each irrigated acre owned. Do not resolve whether that is fair; state only that both rules exist in American local government and that the class will test the arguments for each.

How a special district is funded and elected (12 min). Explain that a special district has narrow powers, in this case delivering irrigation water through canals, and raises nearly all its money by assessing the land it serves rather than by taxing income or sales. State the connection the rule rests on, which is that the district raises its money from acres and therefore assigns its votes to acres as well. Then name the pressure point students will test, which is that a district's canals and its pumping can affect people who own no irrigated land and therefore cast no vote.

Calculating the two apportionments (18 min). Distribute the Student Handout and have students complete items 1 through 6 with calculators. Circulate and check item 5, where students must divide by the total number of adults rather than by the number of landowners; that is the most common error, and catching it early protects item 11, which builds on it.

Assessments and the fairness argument (12 min). Students complete items 7 through 10. Tell them that item 10 is the heart of the lesson, because it asks what the comparison between vote share and payment share actually proves. Ask two students to read their item 10 answers aloud, and press on whether paying the most is the same thing as bearing the most.

Discussion and exit check (10 min). Take the canal question in item 12 to the whole class. Collect the handouts as the exit check and read items 11 and 12 first: a student who can state both the strongest objection and the gap between deciders and affected households has met the lesson's aim, while a student who repeats only that the rule is unfair has not yet used the numbers.

Who Votes in the Ottermoor Irrigation District? — Grade 10 Social Studies & Civics
Name: ____________________________ Date: ______________

Student Handout

The Ottermoor Irrigation District is fictional, and so are the landowners named in the table. The district elects its board by giving each landowner one vote for every irrigated acre owned. It raises its budget by charging every irrigated acre the same annual assessment. Use the table to answer the questions, and show your work.

Landowner or group Irrigated acres Adults living inside the district
Verrell Farms 6,400 3
Kesswick Ranch 4,800 2
Hollis family farm 1,200 4
Sixty small growers, combined 3,600 140
Households in the town of Ottermoor 0 1,050

The district's annual assessment is $28 for each irrigated acre. The town of Ottermoor lies inside the district's boundary, and its households draw their drinking water from shallow wells.

  1. Add the acreage column. How many irrigated acres does the district contain in total?
  2. Under acreage voting, what share of the district's votes does Verrell Farms control? Round to the nearest tenth of a percent.
  3. Under acreage voting, what share of the votes do Verrell Farms and Kesswick Ranch control together? Round to the nearest tenth of a percent.
  4. Add the adults column. How many adults live inside the district in total?
  5. Suppose the district gave one vote to each adult resident instead. What share of the votes would the five adults living on Verrell Farms and Kesswick Ranch control together? Round to the nearest tenth of a percent.
  6. Under the acreage rule now in force, how many votes do the 1,050 adults in the town of Ottermoor control?
  7. Using the annual assessment, how much does Verrell Farms pay the district each year?
  8. Using the annual assessment and your answer to item 1, what is the district's total assessment revenue each year?
  9. Divide your answer to item 7 by your answer to item 8. What share of the district's revenue does Verrell Farms provide? Round to the nearest tenth of a percent.
  10. Compare your answers to items 2 and 9. State what that comparison shows about the argument for acreage voting.
  11. Using your answers to items 5 and 6, state the strongest objection to acreage voting in this district.
  12. The board is deciding whether to line a canal that runs past the town. Lining it would save water for growers, and it would also stop the seepage that now recharges the town's shallow wells. Explain who decides this question and who is affected by it, and say why that gap matters.

From Water for Schools (waterforschools.org). This material is in the public domain (CC0) and may be copied, edited, and shared freely.

Answer Key
  1. Answer: 16,000 acres. The column adds as 6,400 plus 4,800 plus 1,200 plus 3,600, with the town contributing none.
  2. Answer: 40.0 percent. Dividing 6,400 acres by 16,000 acres gives 0.40.
  3. Answer: 70.0 percent. The two hold 6,400 plus 4,800, or 11,200 acres, and 11,200 divided by 16,000 is 0.70.
  4. Answer: 1,199 adults. The column adds as 3 plus 2 plus 4 plus 140 plus 1,050.
  5. Answer: 0.4 percent. The five adults divided by 1,199 adults gives 0.00417, which rounds to 0.4 percent.
  6. Answer: 0 votes. The rule gives one vote per irrigated acre, and the town's households hold no irrigated acres, so they cast nothing in a district election.
  7. Answer: $179,200 per year. Multiplying 6,400 acres by $28 an acre gives 179,200.
  8. Answer: $448,000 per year. Multiplying 16,000 acres by $28 an acre gives 448,000.
  9. Answer: 40.0 percent. Dividing $179,200 by $448,000 gives 0.40.
  10. Answer: Accept any response that states the match and what it does or does not prove. Verrell Farms provides 40.0 percent of the money and casts 40.0 percent of the votes, so under this rule voting power tracks payment exactly, which is the strongest case for acreage voting. A full answer notes that the match holds only for the cost side, since it says nothing about who bears the effects of what the district decides.
  11. Answer: Accept any objection grounded in items 5 and 6. The clearest is that 1,050 adults live inside the district and hold no vote at all, while five adults on two properties would control 70.0 percent of the votes under the acreage rule and only about 0.4 percent under a resident rule, so the same boundary produces two entirely different electorates.
  12. Answer: Accept any response that separates the deciders from the affected. The five directors decide, and they are elected by acreage, so the growers holding most of the acres effectively make the call. The households in town are affected, because lining the canal ends the seepage recharging their wells, yet they hold no vote in the district that decides. The gap matters because the cost of the decision falls on people who cannot vote the board out, which is the situation general-purpose governments are apportioned to prevent.

Differentiation

Support

Give students a calculation frame for items 2, 3, 5, and 9 with the numerator and denominator labeled in words, such as acres owned over total acres, so the two denominators do not blur together. Complete item 1 as a class and leave the total on the board for the rest of the period.

Extension

Have students propose a third apportionment rule for the district, such as splitting the board between acreage-elected and resident-elected seats, then calculate the vote shares their rule would produce for Verrell Farms and for the town, and defend the rule against the strongest objection each side would raise.

ELL supports

Pre-teach "assessment," "apportionment," "special district," and "seepage" with a labeled cross-section showing a canal, water soaking sideways into the ground, and a house well nearby. Provide sentence frames for items 10 through 12, such as "Verrell Farms pays ... percent and votes ... percent, which shows ...," and allow the numeric items to be answered on a shared calculation sheet with a partner.

Extensions

Have students search their own state for a special district that provides water, irrigation, drainage, or flood control, and report how its board is chosen and how its revenue is raised. A short class comparison can sort the districts students find into those apportioned by residents and those apportioned by land, and ask what the districts in each group have in common.