Junior Lawmaker

There are a number of online games intended to explain the deliberative processes of government to schoolchildren. California's Your Idea Becomes A Law may be one of the weakest examples of the genre, since most of the game "action" is essentially hitting a "next" button on the screen, as the player passively watches his or her bill move through votes in committees and the assembly and senate floors to reach the final step of signing (or vetoing) on the governor's desk. Except for choosing your committees and answering a trivia question about the number of votes needed to pass legislation, there is not much to do after you write up your description of your dream legislation. The bill itself doesn't matter and there's no rewriting and revision process shown. For example, no one seemed to object, even in the state's health committee to my proposal to raise test scores by serving children coffee in kindergarten. Drink up kiddies!