College Voting Analysis

Being able to cast my first vote in the 21st century is a privilege. My generation needs to accept their patriotic responsibility and vote because many reforms are needed in order to carry us into the new millennium. Voting reforms are necessary to inspire political participation for other modifications and adjustments needed in areas such as health care, education, and Social Security, all which we as young people will face in the future. Participation in elections is necessary to facilitate and enable progress, but our present day system of voting is expiring by frustrated Americans.

Voting has not always been as easy as it is today. It is interesting to examine how far America has progressed in its process of allowing different types of people to be able to vote. Voting was once aimed at a particular group of people, which were white males that owned their own property. Today, most people over the age of eighteen can vote, except for the mentally incompetent or people who have been convicted of major felonies in some states. The decline of voter participation has always been a debate in the public arena. According to McDonald and Popkin, it is “the most important, most familiar, most analyzed, and most conjectured trend in recent American political history (2001, 963)” The question is, how important is voter

The right to vote is indispensable to any democracy because it is the means by which citizens can collectively decide issues. Nowhere in the Constitution of 1791 does it explicitly guarantee the right to ballot box for women and minority groups, thus, excluding the majority from participating in the political process. Indeed, only 6% of the American population voted in President Washington’s re-election in 1792 (Lepore 2). Article I, Section 2, Clause 1 of the Constitution defers voting eligibility to state legislatures (The Heritage Foundation 3), implicitly condoning the disfranchisement of women, minorities, and destitute whites. Although one can argue the Constitution of 1791 merely reflected the white supremacist, patriarchal society of its time, the reality remains that the significant groups were excluded from participating in the political process.

Rhetorical Analysis: The primary audience for this paper includes every citizen aged eighteen and above eligible to vote in the United States. The proposed topic mostly concerns these individuals due to the fact, they are affected by presidential voting institutions. Throughout this paper, I will be arguing in favor of the Electoral College, with an end goal of persuading my audience of the benefits of the system.

Throughout the past presidential election, and many others, the ideal of electing the president by popular vote has been at an all-time high conversation topic compared to previous years. While many argue that the Electoral College defeats the purpose of voting, and diminishes the majority’s voice, this is certainly not the case. Without the Electoral College, elections would quickly become, and encourage, radical and corrupt ways in their voting systems, that could possibly result in a detrimental nationwide political crisis of voter fraud, and a rise to direct democracy.

Society has been significantly revolutionized since the beginnings of the United States. The very history of the country has been cursed with racism and the harsh oppression of minorities. In fact, America’s power and economy were founded on a Marxist theory of a two-class system. On the top of that system were the slave owners, and at the very bottom were the slaves themselves (Balkaran, 1999). Slavery and segregation used to be huge components in the lives of Americans. During those times, “Americans” were white, landowning men; obviously that principle has been altered a great deal. People of color, women, and the poor actually have been given suffrage by amendments in the Constitution. Although the United States’ culture and society

Living in a nation based on democracy, where a citizen’s voice is the equivalent of casting a vote in political elections, the majority of American citizens eligible to vote do not participate in elections. The rationale behind voter non-participation varies among individuals and demographic groups; however, they all share a connection regarding their feelings towards their treatment by the country's political system. Minority voters such as blacks and hispanics are a demographic group highly faced with disenfranchisement in regards to political elections due to oppression. North Carolina’s Voter ID laws are a prime example of how minority voters are being shut out.

The 2016 presidential election revealed how politically diverse the United States is and it also revealed the inequalities of colored people and the working class. Furthermore, Donald Trump’s victory embodied white male supremacy and the interest of the wealthy. Thus, UCSB students started to correlate Trumps victory with flaws in American democracy. Despite the notion that college students are indifferent to politics, in the contemporary moment UCSB students have a critical view on the state of American democracy in the United States that is mainly shaped by the 2016 Presidential election and Donald Trump’s controversial conservative ideologies.

It seems as though the younger population of voters have all grown up in a world where they have been influenced to believe that their one vote will not make a difference, and therefore they do not bother to take the time out of their busy schedules to cast their meaningless vote. In the last presidential election, only one out of four citizens between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four casted their vote (“Is the System broken?”). The opinion that one vote will not make a difference appears to be directly respondent to the younger generation of voters. This generation needs to be educated on the difference that one vote can make.

“Young people are interested in politics, and do have faith in the democratic process. Nonetheless, the political system and the established parties and politicians that dominate it, are together failing to

I’m actively involved in politics and try to vote as often as possible. This last week, over spring break, the Illinois primary took place. I had every intention to participate, but then my friends and I planned a last minute trip to Florida. I didn’t even remember I missed the primary election until writing this paper. It’s not that I don’t care, but young people can get distracted easily.

State and local elections create a series of moments that are sometimes stressful for the voters who are faced with the decision making process that could have a major impact on their lives and their communities. Selecting and voting for the candidate that holds the values, qualities and opinions that a voter shares is often not so clear cut. Presidential elections have the potential for creating even greater stress and anxiety due to the power and control that the voters give to one individual. Voters have to consider the quality of a sole being that will eventually make decisions that impact the entire nation, and ultimately every individual citizen. This decision making process for both the candidates and the voters can be observed from multiple psychological perspectives; ranging from the social to the psychoanalytic. The 2008 Presidential election, however, presents even more perspectives due to the candidacy of a well known, strong female and a dynamic and charismatic African American. In light of the fact that either one of these candidates will constitute a “first” if they win the election, many voters may be influenced by a number of psychological perspectives as Election Day approaches.

1. Only 21 percent of the voting eligible population in 2014 were young adults ages 18-29 (“why student voters matter”, 2016).

Election Day is something this generation takes for granted. In many states there exists same day voter registration in order to get as many citizens to have their voice heard at the polls as possible. In some states, upon submitting driver’s license forms, you’re provided the form to register to vote, and for good reason, as the most politically active group of people falls around the age of 65. With such a large age gap between the politically active and the politically apathetic, one could easily wonder how the results are altered as a result of it. While this might not seem to be a reasonable spread of data, this is a far cry from where we have been. While we have great age disparity it is nothing once compared to the racial disparity in our past. In that past many states used unfair means and methods in order to prevent people of different races and ethnic backgrounds from having their voices heard on a national level.

As an African-American Male in the United States of America, the opportunity to exercise my constitutional right to vote in the 2016 Presidential election was an honor. During this time, I was a first-year college student in another city outside of my permanent residency in Texas; therefore, I decided to vote using an absentee ballot. However, using this method to vote was a concern because of possible fraud. Nevertheless, as a new voter, I proceeded with filing in my absentee ballot early in the voting process, although skeptical about the tabulation and tallying processes. On November 8, 2016, imagine my surprise when I learned that Donald J. Trump was the President of the United States of America. In view of this information, my initial reaction was “what the bleep is wrong with Americans”! Subsequently, social media websites across the country erupted with anger and joy depending on your candidate preference. As a result, Millennials expressed their anger on social media websites to the Electoral College for ignoring the will of the people. However, the anger from the Millennials did not matter since the premise of the Electoral College was before our time, giving the elite the right to decide the Presidency on the behalf of the less educated. As a result, the elite Electoral College voters decided to elect a scandalous administration to run our country. Based on social media comments, Millennials believe that Congress needs to disestablish this antiquated