My board game design:
Inspired by the Presidential Campaign 2008, I pick up a Chinese traditional board game concept and combine it with this very particular event. As Jake has pointed out this afternoon, it can be of some education purpose, teaching kids what is going on with voting as a citizen.
The Rules:
Looking at the prototype above, there are basically two people allowed to play at the same time. One will use black chessman, which refers to democrats; the other will use the white one, representing republicans.
Then the essential idea of this game is to “attack and defense”. Each side needs to grab one chessman in each turn, and put it on the top of each state as they would like. But each player cannot place the chessman randomly, as they should try to build up the pattern in which four of chessmen (the same color) are lined up in a straight path [attack]. Once that pattern is shown, the player can pick up one state from those four to win votes, in the meanwhile, she/he should also take the chessman away for future reuse. As we know, the votes are different, depending on the state’s population, so normally folks will choose the bigger state; however, it is not always the best choice, as you won’t use the state you have won before. Thus, in this game, having a long term strategy is also a required course here. 
When it comes to defense, in order to break the four-in-a-line pattern, the other player needs to destroy it by putting chessman in the line.
There is always an end; we will set up the time before game. When time is up, both of them should stop and sum up the total number of the votes. Who gets more WINS like Obama!
