Essay on Oregon's Election

Getting to polling locations can be a hassle, especially for the disabled, the sick, and people without transportation. In addition, voting becomes even more difficult for

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.

     I will now examine some of last election year’s results. Voter turnout has decreased in the past years. There are two main factors that have been coming up in the past years. First, many citizens say that who is elected in office is not as important as it once was. Secondly, younger Americans are more cynical and disconnected from politics than ever. I think there is too much information out there and another thing that might be the reason this is happening is

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

It will take great strides to create a system in which American citizens will be represented in the political process, and only then will young Americans be truly compelled to vote. One way to achieve this goal

system. The Electoral vote has the tendency and chance to grasp the attention of voters, rather

With any decision, both parties (republican and democratic) campaign over the state to gain support from voters to increase their chances of being elected to the office that they desire. When voting most voters arrive at polling stations to vote, first for instance, they can be given a paper ballot on which they will select their choices and which later will be checked by hand; second they can be given a

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

A version of this article appears in print on December 4, 2016, on page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: Maine Adopts New Way Of Counting Ballots. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

“Your vote is your voice as an American citizen. It's your opportunity to be heard, to hold elected officials accountable for their elections and to have a say in important issues that affect your community. On Election Day, every vote matters”. Anonymous

It is worth a little of both our time and our energy to exercise the right to vote, and that personal investment should serve to make us a bit more conscious of the value of that opportunity.

Many people in America find it difficult to even get to the ballot box on election day. Some say that they can’t get off from work because they live paycheck to paycheck and they would have to work overtime to make up for the pay they didn’t gain that work day. This is a problem that seems to be leading to substandard representation of those at, near or below the poverty line. Suggestions have been made to potentially make election day a holiday so everyone can get off working to go through the long ballot lines and I believe this could potentially be the right step to take to ensure more people are adequate representation. To make election day even more efficient, it would probably be a good idea to have mail-in ballots for every state along with election day being a holiday.

With key aspects of the Voting Rights Act being returned to the regulation of the state governments, there has been a trend of the defunding and stricter rules directed toward voting registration drives. These drives have long been problematic with the concepts of “priming” and “fraud” being discussed in relation to their existence, but they have played a huge role in the outreach program to increase overall voter turnout. There have been arguments that they decrease the urgency of the vote which has also been applied to early voting periods and Election Day Registration acts, but they succeeded in increasing the voter turnout rate overall and decreasing the wait lines at the poll, bringing forth the question as to why voting urgency would be a necessity in the process of the vote. Since the changes to the VRA, many states have gone forth to defund these drives, seeing them as having no purpose and being a waste of money. Many states that kept the drives added strict regulations. These include not allowing blank registration

The U.S Constitution gives the states considerable latitude in the way of conducting elections. The American citizens have many opportunities to vote. However, a turnout in American elections has dramatically decreased over the past several decades. In order to address this issue, majority of states have allowed absentee voting reforms. These convenient reforms are thought to increase the voter turnout in the elections, as well as to reduce administrative costs.

In 2000 Riverside County California decided to spend 14 million dollars to make their voting system all electronic. This decision was made on the basis that in 1998 more than one million dollars was spent on paper ballots (in Riverside), but when only half of the county voted the extras had to be trashed. For local elections their new electronic system fetched a 99% approval rating from voters (Wired.com article). The only foreseeable downside to this technology is the start up price and with internet voting not likely due to security issues, this maybe the best solution.