Carmen High School of Science and Technology Should Americans Be Required to Vote? Sintia Ortega American Government Period 5 Ms. Engibous 5/3/13 Sintia Ortega American Government Ms.Engibous Period 5 5/3/13 Should Americans Be Required to Vote? Americans should be required to vote because less and less people have voted making our country look lazy bums. What will happen if everyone decides not to vote anymore? Since World War II no other election has ever involved 65% or more registered voters.
Are 1 percent of voters affected, 10 percent, or more? The studies that have been done range from showing no effects to showing more than 10 percent of voters potentially affected. Obviously, these cannot all be right, or they may be looking at different elections with different characteristics. An importantissue is the perceived closeness of the election before the election occurredand the peceived closeness of the election based on exit poll results. Jackson (1983), whose paper we discuss in greater detail below, points out very sensibly that the only time the exit polls can have an effect is when they change voters' perceptions about the closeness of the race.
Though Al Gore won the popular vote by 48.4% Bush won the votes of the Electoral College which resulted in him winning the Presidential election. Another example that presents Electoral Colleges distorted nature is the 1996 election in which Bill Clinton achieved 49% of the popular vote and went on to achieve 70% of the Electoral College vote. However, this is a weak argument as prior to this election it never occurred that a running candidate had more Electoral College votes without gaining the majority of votes in the national popular vote. A national popular vote would allow democracy to function in its most pure form by selecting the President based on the national popular
• Nixon was the first president-elect since 1848 to not bring in one house of congress for his party in an initial election. • Wallace did worse than expected. He won 9,906,473 popular votes. • Wallace had also demonstrated the power of the continuing power of the populist politics. The Obituary of Lyndon Johnson • Lyndon Johnson returned to his ranch in January 1969 and died there four years later.
To what extent are mid-term elections merely a referendum on the performance of the president? Jan 2011 Q7 (45 marks) Mid-term elections are the elections for the whole of the House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate that occur midway through the president’s 4-year term of office. I will be judging to what extent midterms can be seen merely as a referendum on the President’s performance. Mid-term elections can be seen merely as a referendum on the performance of the President because the President’s party has lost seats in the House of Representatives in all but three mid-term elections in the last 100 years. For example the three mid-terms where this happened were 1934, when Roosevelt won 9 more seats, 1998, when Clinton won 5 more seats and 2002, when George W. Bush won 8 more seats.
When the time comes for the people of America to vote they go to the voters booth and actually cast their ballots for the electors committed to vote for the candidate of their party not the President and Vice President. Electors of the party receiving the highest vote in each state are elected. Their votes are mailed to the president of the U.S. Senate and he reveals the final decision. The candidates have to win a majority of 270 of the 538 elector votes in order to become elected as President.
People vote for electors, and those electors elect the president. The problem with this is that someone can win the presidency without winning the popular vote. Majority of Americans could have voted for President X, but President Y could still win. One recent example of this occurring is in the 2000 election, Bush v. Gore. “In 2000, Democrat Al Gore won the popular vote in the election, with 50,992,335 votes to 50,455,156 votes for George W. Bush.” (http://www.deseretnews.com/top/1093/9/2000-George-W-Bush-vs-Al-Gore-10-of-theclosest-presidential-elections-in-United-States-history.html) Al Gore had about half of a million more votes than George Bush.
Maya Austell March 6, 2012 American History II Book review on 1912 Election and the Power of Progressivism The election of 1912 was a rare four-way contest. All four candidates ultimately had the same goals and similar qualities of Progressivism but quite different ways of moving towards it. Brett Flehinger states “Although Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson, Debs, and others disagreed fundamentally on a number of issues, their debates focused on a central question: How should American society respond to the swift and sweeping social and political changes brought on by the development of this new corporate economy.” (pg. 21) Before President Theodore Roosevelt left office, he picked William Howard Taft to be his successor and helped get him elected. William Howard Taft was nominated by the support of Republicans and the conservative wing.
There are 4 powers that the Vice President has according to the traditional constitution and one subsequent amendment has meant that there are now 5 powers. These are as follows; Counting and announcing the result of the Electoral College votes after a presidential election. This role is almost irrelevant for the vice president
2. Election of 1800 • Democratic Republican Thomas Jefferson and Aaron VS. Federalist President John Adams and Charles Pinckney • No separate ballots for President and Vice President a) All candidates ran for presidency; second highest vote would be VP • Thomas Jefferson won the state of New York because of Aaron Burr’s influence a) Burr and Jefferson received the same amount of votes(73 electoral votes) b) Under the constitution, the tie could only be broken by the House of Representatives, which was filled with Federalists at the time(preferred Burr over Jefferson) c) After a long deadlock, Alexander Hamilton and John Adams persuaded a few House members to change their votes, thus helped secure the presidency for Jefferson • Also known as the revolution of 1800 a) Transfer of power from one party to another through elections and all the parties has to accept. Jeffersonian Democracy 1. What is it? • An ideal form of government by Thomas