Voting Rights and Responsibilities The United States of America, we are the champions of the democracy. Why is it then that our society is so inactive in our government? In the last presidential election there was a forty-nine percent voter turnout. In the most important and most publicized of all our elections, less than half of our citizens voted. America has come a long way since its Independence. Throughout her history she has gone through a number of changes. One of these periods in which number of reforms took place was the progressive era. Many state legislations, federal legislations, and court decisions, passed during this time period, helped to improve societal positions.
Although every American citizen over 18 years of age is allowed to vote only about half of those turn out to vote on Election Day. For the last 50 years we have never had a higher percentage than 62.8 of eligible Americans voting. The percentage of voters tends to be between 60% and 50% during a presidential election year. Years when only Congressmen are being elected the percentages are even lower. It is very important for Americans to vote because those who are elected to office make the laws and decisions that affect the well being of our country. There are some historical, social, and economical issues throughout our past and today, however that explain why people do not vote.
The emergence of the party system had a potent impact upon the presidency, for the extreme visibility of the office made the president a target of scurrilous attacks in the partisan press. Moreover, in the elections of 1800, party-line voting produced a tie between Jefferson and his putative vice-presidential running mate, Aaron Burr, and threw the choice into the House of Representatives. A constitutional crisis nearly ensued as the House was deadlocked. Had it remained deadlocked until the end of John Adamss term on March 4, 1801, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall would have become president in keeping with the existing presidential succession act. On February 17, 1801, on the 36th ballot, Jefferson was chosen president. To avert the future possibility of ties, the Twelfth Amendment, ratified in 1804, required electors to cast separate ballots for president and vice president. Since the first election there have been three major time periods where one party controlled the government and one era where neither party could gain consistent control of the Executive branch for more than 2 or 3 elections.
The Essay on 1988 Presidential Election Vice President
... victory in 1988, the Republican Party had won five of the last six Presidential elections. Vice President George Bush was the first ... turnout. About 510 f the voting age public voted in the 1988 Presidential election, the lowest post World War 2 percentage. ... Republican domination of presidential politics for another four years. The Republican Primary was a race between Vice President George Bush and ...
After the constitutions ratification the Democrats won almost all of the elections. Contributing to the weakness of the presidency after 1824 was the use of national conventions to nominate presidential candidates rather than congressional caucuses. The new voting system existed primarily as a means of winning national elections and dividing the spoils of victory, and the principal function of the president became the distribution of government jobs. The Democrats were largely supported by small farmers, debtors, frontier pioneers, and slaveholders. As the civil war approached, however the Democrats were split between the North and the South. Then with the start of the Civil War and the election in 1860, Republicans started to control the presidency.
The Republicans were able to keep control after the war though the support of newly freed slaves. Then, with the start of the Great Depression the Democrats regained control. They maintained controlled until 1968, when a new era started. In this era, no one party has been able to consistently retain control of the executive branch. This is due in part to political scandals, the economic situation, and the political situations like Vietnam. Through the history of America not everyone has been able to vote. The electorate, or people eligible to vote, has changed many times.
The Essay on Electoral College Reform Votes People Vote
In order to increase the ease of creating and establishing a federal government with a central figure of office, the framers of the Constitution created the Electoral College. The College was formed to ease the process of electing a president every four years. The idea behind the Electoral College was that each state received a certain number of electoral votes according to its population, all of ...
People should have the right to vote because our government is a democracy and gets its power from us through the idea of popular sovereignty. However, people need to be governed. This is why we can amendment the constitution and everyone should have a right to vote on the people who make those changes. The 15th Amendment allows people with previous conditions of slavery the right to vote. The 19th Amendment guarantees the right of women to vote. The 24th Amendment outlaws poll taxes. Finally, the 26th Amendment makes everyone 18 years of age eligible to vote.
We wrote out in the constitution that the Government or any of its citizens could not take away our life, liberty, and property. All of these amendments were put in by our government to stop those people who were trying to take those powers away. There are many factors that affect the way people vote. The first thing that affects a voters views are their personal characteristics and the second is the voters affiliations. The voters income or amount of money earned per year; occupation, or job held effect their views. Education, grade school, high school, or college degree; a voters gender, male or female; their age, under 30, or between 30 and 49, or over 50; religious background, Catholic, or Jew, or Protestant; ethnic background or race, white or nonwhite; and geography, or region of residence, like North, South, East or West, are all a voters personal characteristics. Your family, co-workers or friends, are the voters affiliations.
People over 50 usually vote Republican, while nonwhites usually vote Democratic. This does not hold true for all people over 50 and nonwhites because someone could be over 50 and nonwhite. All of these factors contribute to a person’s political affiliation, but no one factor decides exactly how someone will vote. Psychological factors have to do with peoples individual behavior. Party identification, candidates, or issues of the candidates are all psychological factors. All of these can effect how someone might vote.
The Essay on Successes And Failures Of Civil Rights Movement
Successes and Failures of Civil Rights Movement The Civil Rights movement was being based on the idea of equality between people of different racial affiliation and between genders. Even though that the roots of this movement can be traced back to twenties, it only started to gain momentum after the end of World War 2. It is not by mere accident that the beginning of Civil Rights movement is ...
Our nations voter problem could be due to several things. The first is the fact that we have a two party system, and we will most likely always have a two-party system. Some people say they cannot change the outcome of an election by just one vote. Some people are just lazy, and when they see that the polls have closed on the East coast and the person they want to win is ahead by 10%, they think there is no need to go out and vote. Currently the United States has a large problem with voter turnout and some steps need to be taken to get more people to vote. People need to be more involved and better informed. People need to understand as citizens it is their obligation to vote.
People need to read the paper and watch the news so they can be more aware of the candidates and the issue of each election. Finally, American citizens need to find out when and where they should go to vote and take the time to do so. One idea to encourage voting is to set up programs in schools that would inform young people, who are soon to be voters, on issues, candidates, and political policies. Finally, programs could be set up to make the act of voting easier. For example, mail in ballots, or having the polls open long for longer periods of time covering several days giving people more opportunities to find time to vote.
Bibliography:
Howard Ball, Dale Krane and Thomas P.
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The Essay on Good Citizen People Vote Class
To Vote or Not to Vote, Is That Really a Question? Are students properly informed in political areas? The question abounds while adults worry about weather students will vote for political views or weather they just agree with Bruce Springsteen. Astin says that "A democracy works only to the extent that the voter is well informed" (Astin 97). Astin believes that the only way to have a properly ...
James F. Findlay, Jr. Church People in the Struggle: The National Council of Churches and the Black Freedom Movement, 1950-1970 (1993).
Ron Formisano, Boston Against Busing: Race, Class and Ethnicity in the 1960s and 1970s (1991) John M. Glen, Highlander: No Ordinary School, 1932-1962 (Lexington, 1988).
Hugh Davis Graham, The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy (1990).
Henry Hampton and Steve Fayer, Voices of Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1950s through the 1980s (New York, 1990).
Richard H. King, Civil Rights and the Idea of Freedom (1992).
Steven F. Lawson, Running for Freedom: Civil Rights and Black Politics Since 1941 (New York, 1991).
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