Legitimacy Of 2000

In John Fund’s reflection, the Department of Investigation went through a procedure to see how easy it was to commit voter fraud. The DOI had sent out agents to show up at 63 polling places all who “pretended to be voters who should have been turned away by election officials; the agents assumed names of individuals who had died or moved out of town, or who were sitting in jail. 61 instances, or 97 percent of the time, the testers were allowed to vote.” (Fund, pg 353) After gathering this evidence that voter fraud was possible and way easier than it seemed, they published a report which accused the city’s Board of Elections voting

A question that we all need to understand that is rarely interrogated is, why do we have elections in the first place? America is too big and complexed to hold public referendums on individual issues, although some states try to do it, this is called complexity. So in the case we choose representatives, we vote for people and not policies. Political scientist have a much broader way of describing this, in terms of adverse selection. “Adverse selection is a problem that can arise when we make a choice but do not necessarily have all the information we need to make that choice.” So we have elections, they help to solve this problem because they are ideally competitive. The competition creates incentives for candidates to give information about themselves and to make most of that information accurate since their opponent will call them out for any statements that are less than truthful. Elections supposedly also makes candidates more accountable since they provide voters a chance to get rid of the bad impersonators. The Election you might think is important enough to be included in the constitution, however it is not, although “the constitution does set up a few basic guidelines that structure american elections, but most of the important rules that defines the way elections are carried out come out of state laws, legal decisions, and local administrative practices. So the constitution does not really say a lot about election, but mostly about choosing the President and it

Voter ID Laws, now present in some form or another in thirty states, require individuals to show government-issued identification in order to cast a ballot on Election Day. The debate over the need for such laws has never been more important. Voter ID laws were brought to the forefront of American politics in the most recent presidential election as a result of President Elect Donald Trump’s insistence that the election process in America is riddled with wide-spread voter fraud. His claims of a “rigged election” were printed, broadcast, and proliferated through social media for the majority of his campaign. Such claims, if factual, should certainly be immediately rectified. The United States is built on the integrity of its election process and maintaining that integrity is paramount. The issue at hand is: Are these claims of widespread voter fraud fact or fiction? The key driver in the debate over Voter ID laws is whether or not such laws are intended to prevent voter fraud or whether the laws themselves are a form of government-endorsed fraud intended to suppress the vote of specific populations. The fact remains that neither the President Elect nor the states implementing Voter ID laws have been able to produce evidence of election rigging or widespread voter fraud. As such, without evidence of the need for the supposed protection from fraud that these laws are intended to provide, we can only conclude that such laws are not

It doesn’t take a political expert to see that the 2000 presidential election between Bush and Gore was extremely illegitimate. This can be observed through the recount incident which took place in the state of Florida. Many people, especially seniors, felt that they had not voted for the right candidate, which was due to a confusing ballot setup. The ballots were called “butterfly ballots”. These ballots, as one could imagine, had candidates on either side which the voter could choose from. Seems simple enough, right? Unfortunately, that was not the case. The font on the ballots were extremely minuscule, as well as condensed. To add to that, the voter had to use a pin to make a puncture next to their selection. Some people, who were either

In this country, we hold elections every four years to select the president. The founding fathers of our country established the electoral college to give the original thirteen states a fair voice in the election process. This country electoral called the electoral college into question on more the one occasion. In the most recent election, President-elect Donald Trump won the electoral vote over Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. This election has sent the country into an uproar and citizens of the United States are now challenging the legitimacy of the electoral college process. This paper will examine whether this process is reliable and valid when choosing the leadership of this country.

still attached to the ballot in some way. As a result of these complications in

The most recent case of an unfair election was the Bush vs. Al Gore Election. Robert Hall from the Sun Sentinel says that Al Gore should have won because he had 544,000 more votes than Bush, meaning that Al Gore had the majority vote. Al Gore still lost though because of electoral votes. According to Tom Landform, there have been 4 other cases like Al Gore’s where the candidate lost because of the Electoral College. This is completely unfair to the candidate because these people won their election with the majority votes that are needed but the Electoral College took their victory away from them. The public is a victim of this ongoing problem too. The public does not realize this but people’s votes are being “wasted” or thrown away. Tara Ross says that the winner take all system are “wasting” people’s votes. This happens because in an election the majority vote wins and all the electoral votes go to that party. This means that if a party wins with 50.1 percent it is equivalent to winning with 100 percent. This occurred in the Bush vs. Al Gore election also. According to Tara Ross from Democracy, Al Gore had 2.5 million people who voted for him in Texas but were wasted because of the winner take all system. The Electoral College is ruining the people’s say in who they want and what they want to happen. This system that America has is not working and needs to

Trust in the election process is key to democracy. Without this there is no peaceful transition of power, which has been a keystone of the American political system (Wattenburg). One reason for this doubt is the chance for faithless electors. Faithless electors is an elector who does not cast their vote for the candidate that won their state (“Faithless Electors”). For example, if an elector voted for Trump when their state’s popular vote was won by Clinton. This means a person casts their vote for the winning candidate, and the electors in their state do not have to listen to their vote. Another source of doubt comes from the possibility of electing a minority president. The 2016 election showed the devastating results of electing a minority president. When Trump won riots erupted across the nation. The biggest ones being in the major cities of Portland, Oakland, and Los Angeles. In these cities the rioters chanted “Not my President” (Ansari). They also vandalized buildings and cars while throwing fireworks, molotov cocktails and other objects at officers. This led too many rests including 185 arrested in Los Angeles alone (Ansari). If the United States of America cannot keep the transition of power peaceful our country will fall

As in the past, the media was covering the all important election. They had always relied on exit polls as the polls closed across the nation. In reality, the Florida results were just too close to call. Nevertheless, that did not stop the media from doing so. Not once, but twice, major news media outlets were erroneous in their report. Around 8pm, it was declared that Al Gore was the projected winner of the electoral votes in the state of Florida. However, a couple of hours later, the projection was retracted and restated as Florida as being too close to call. Then, just after 2am on November 8, the mistake was made for a second time. The major networks declared George W. as the winner. This even led to Al Gore calling the Governor to concede. However, as Gore prepared to address his supporters in Nashville, Tennessee, he was alert to the shrinking numbers in Bush¡¦s lead. The final total was now less than one half of a percent lead in favor of Bush. That immediately calls for a recount of votes under state law. Subsequently, Gore called Bush and retracted his concession. It wasn¡¦t over yet! One thing was, Al Gore had prevailed in the popular vote but without Florida¡¦s tally, the electoral vote was up in the air. The election wasn¡¦t over and the recounts began.

Ever heard the saying, “Every vote counts?” The real question we have to ask ourselves today is, does every vote really count? Can a presidential election be decided by just one vote? It has never been that close in the popular vote, but that isn't how the president is elected. The president can lose by over a million votes, as seen in the 2016 presidential race, and still win the electoral college. How can we, as Americans, condone an illegitimate president? The Electoral College has to go, and go now, before other faults than disregarding popular vote like swing states votes getting counted for more and discouraging third parties become known by more people.

Imagine two candidates running for the presidency of a country. They are both outstanding candidates, and it is a close race. Going into the days of the voting, no one knows who is going win the election, and become the president. When the votes are tallied it shows that one candidate received more overall votes from the people of the country than the other. He, obviously being the favorite of the people, loses the election. Many of the people of the country are confused why he lost the election even though he won the popular vote. The winning candidate won because the country he won the presidency of, uses an outdated and flawed voting system. This candidate assumes the presidency knowing that he does not have the support of more than half of the nation that he is now

Elections, if only due to their colossal size, are difficult to measure. The 2000 presidential election Florida recount exemplifies the issues associated with vote counting and the often unsuccessful implementation of technology to remedy a centuries old process. Technology in the election process is often accompanied by great skepticism, and blunders are not uncommon—see Mitt Romney’s

Even though there may be some flaws in the system, it has been working since our government began. And the American people elect the electoral voters, who vote for the president based on that counties vote. This process may be corrupt at times, but if you look at this year’s election people wanted a change, and elected Donald Trump. The popular vote was against him, but throughout the country many counties switched sides and voted for him. Many of the votes Hilary obtained came from bigger cities who are always Democrat. This essay will take some thinking, but it is something that has happened recently and opened my

There is a significantly low percentage of people who commits voter fraud on purpose. A quote from the text states “1 case of a dead person voting (Alan J. Mandell) because poll worker got the deceased man’s name mixed with Alan J. Mandel”, which is who he was casting the vote for. This proves that the election is not rigged invalidates the statement by Donald Trump by claiming that Obama got most his votes from deceased people in his election. There are more incidents where there was an accidental voter fraud. For example, according to the Philly Voice article it stated, “Action News identified some 2,000 cases of suspected voter fraud”, Schmidt said. “Due to time restraints, the Election Board agreed to investigate 20 of them selected by the news organization.” In the end the 20 cases came back that voter fraud was not committed. Also that “the other cases involved an election worker scanning the wrong name or a voter mistakenly signing under the wrong name.” This shows even the most likely to commit a crime wasn’t voter

The ultimate source of political power in the United States lays in the people as we carry out our civic responsibilities. By voting Americans can choose who they trust as a national leader, but the candidate can choose the kind of people who chooses them. Politicians have believed that citizens are illegally meddling with elections by either increasing or decreasing the votes of a favored candidate, but if such a crime exists, and there are many ways of doing so, why is it difficult to find evidence of it.