An extremely good movie starring Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick based on this novel was released in 1999. The novel is very similar and yet different in some key ways, and it’s a fast, enjoyable read.

The story is told from the point of view of the key players in a minor drama that mirrors the little dramas we all experience in our own lives, which seem so important at the time – so important that they have the power to change the course of a life – and yet are ultimately so inconsequential. The particular drama chronicled in Election concerns a high school student-body president election, the three candidates and the teacher who fixed the results.