Political Science Discussion Post Comment/Response
Question Description
In America today people get to elect the politicians they want to run their government. In many countries the citizens do not get to vote and others get to vote but there is only one candidate so it is a mute point if they vote or not. In America, the citizens not only get to vote for the officials that control their lives, they get to choose the candidates. The first step is the primaries, where the parties choose their candidates. It happens at every level, state , county and cities. In California, we have County Supervisors, City Mayors, and State Governor, just as an example of who is elected in our State, among many other positions, like Judges and the Chief of Police and State Senators and others. Most of all those positions have to go through a Primary, then the General Election, which is held every year on the first Tuesday of November. Every four years it is the big election, where we vote for the President . Over time it seems like the election process has changed.
First of all, the type of ballots that we get has changed over time. It was a straight ticket vote where all the candidates were on one ballot together based on their party, so you choose a party, grabbed a ballot and voted for everyone on that page. Then it evolved to what we have now is voting on a computer in many areas, or voting on a little punch booklet. All the candidates are on the ballot and we get to choose exactly who we want to vote for. As for the President, the person has to be nominated at the party’s National Convention. Also, at that time they draft the party platform, a statement of basically the party’s rules.
Then we have the electoral college controversy. The states all hold their presidential elections in November every four years and get the results then the Electoral College votes in December, someone from each and every state. There is an unwritten rule that the Electoral College votes the way their state voted, like if Abraham Lincoln won, the electoral college votes for Abe. the winner of this Electoral college vote, is deemed the winner. Over the 200 plus years that we have been using this system, our country has been doing very well, surprisingly enough. Now, there’s a big movement to change the voting system and eliminate this system. According to all knowledgeable people about this, it will never change . It will throw off the whole election protection of fairness. Without the way we do it now, the President will be elected solely by New York and California and maybe Texas and Ohio. We have 50 states that need to be included. Everyone wants equality and fairness so we cannot eliminate the Electoral College. Many young people think it seems more fair to have the majority vote decide who wins, but it is not.
The next major issue people are contentious about is that they want the candidates to only talk about issues and what they will do if they are elected, not to have negative campaigns and to keep everything friendly. That’s a great idea, but it does not work. Especially since today’s news media is not like it should be in reporting the facts and real news. The way the citizens learn about the candidates is by the campaigning and especially the debates. Many people obviously liked what Trump said during the primaries and then continued to like him and he won the election. This surprised many news people because in their opinion, he was not doing things the way they thought he should do and say things. It was almost as if the news media was in charge of the candidates and it was their demand that the candidate obey what they say. The funny thing is it ended up that the general public did not want the news media to control the candidates. It seemed like the general public was appreciative of straight forward talk, direct messages through Twitter and Instagram and they were tired of politicians who just had professionals write everything they should say on a teleprompter. In 2016, people were just happy to have a candidate with an alternative style and so, that candidate won. People were tired of all talk and no action.
I am of course, very skeptical of just about everything, so, it’s just me but I feel like there was lots of voter fraud in the 2018 midterms. I do not think there was as much in the 2016 election because no one ever imagined that Trump would win, so no one had to cheat. But in 2018, everyone in the swamp was running scared so they probably had a few million dead people vote. I read about many people who were caught cheating in that election.
In a perfect world, I would sure like to invent a fool proof voting machine, maybe voting by fingerprints, or something to keep our elections truly legit. I worry about our future and being free to vote and having our vote count. It is a very real concern in the whole world, especially in our country. We want the good guys running the country.

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