...that influences the political and voting behavior of the public. The studies done on the relationship of the media and voting (Hayes, 2009; Hopmann, Renes, Clases, & Albaek, 2010; Donatella, Pasquino, Vaccari, 2008) demonstrated that the strongest media impact was upon the politically unknowledgeable and the undecided voting public. However, a few more studies (Matthijs & DeVreese, 2008; Freedman & Goldstein, 1999; Hayes, 2009; Pinkleton, Austin, & Fortman, 1998; Tworzecki & Semetko, 2009) have been conducted looking at the impacts of negative campaign or political message content on the public’s voting...
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...chronologically challenged decision makers”(Bryne). Voting age and privileges have changed many times in the past and now is the time to change it again. Putting a cap would help let younger people decide their own future. Younger adults deserve to have a say on what they want because not everyone else takes into consideration to younger kids. Voting age should be changed to a younger age such as 16 and/or have an age limit of around 87 in the United States. Even though voting age has changed in the past, we have not really taken a look into putting a cap of around 87, also young adults are very much part of the community and they deserve a say. Voting age/privilege has changed a lot in...
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...are given just for being a citizen. Voting is a personal choice for Americans. The fears of losing rights and freedom have been present for many decades and centuries. Everybody is concerned that citizens may not be as free as they once were. People fought hard to make every American citizen free. Citizens who complain that our government is not perfect and is not doing well for the United States are people who usually do not even vote. One vote can make a difference. Citizens are extremely concerned with our rights and freedom, but do not even attempt to make a change. Citizens are capable of holding the responsibility of voting and being a United States citizen. Although citizens are capable, Americans do not attempt to be more informed. I think that if a citizen is more informed, the better choices that then leads to better decisions in the United States. Citizens are responsible for their own country and they need to take part in making this country succeed. Politicians may not always make the best decisions, so when citizens have the chance; they need to get their thoughts and words out. United States Citizens are Americans; citizens of the United States are live in freedom and have rights. Citizens need to remember that they became free and that the freedom leads them to make decisions that are best for every body, including themselves. If one does not vote, then one does not have a chance to get their opinions out. Voting is a personal chance and everybody...
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...Section four (b) of this act provided the “coverage formula” for defining the “covered jurisdictions” as States or political subdivisions maintained tests or devises as prerequisites to voting. Section four (b) defines the eligible districts as those that had a voting test in place as of November 1, 1964 and less than a 50% turnout for the 1964 presidential election. These districts had to prove to the Attorney General, or a three judge panel of a Washington D.C. district court that the challenge “neither has the purpose nor will have the effect” of negatively impacting any person’s right to vote based on race or minority status. Section five of the Voting Rights Act was designed to prevent voting discrimination by requiring all states and local governments with a history of voting discrimination to get approval from the Federal Government before making any changes to their voting laws or...
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... FOREIGN LITERATURE “Electronic Voting Literature” Voting on the internet using PC's everyday offers only weak security, but its main disadvantages are in the areas of anonymity and protection against coercion and/or vote selling. The Presidential elections of 2000 brought national attention to problems with current American methods of casting and counting votes in public elections. Most people believe that the current system should be changed; there is much disagreement on how such changes should be made. Dr. Michael Shamos of CMU provides a sharp counterpoint [6] to Neumann and Mercuri's views. While his “Six Commandments” summary of requirements for a voting system is very similar to others' requirements, he's less afraid of the catastrophic failures and sweeping fraud made possible by imperfections in electronic voting machines actually occurring in a real election. Shamos is also much less impressed with paper ballots than are Neumann and Mercuri. He places a great deal of faith in decentralization to make fraud difficult to commit and easy to detect. Dr. Shamos even likes DRE machines. (We must take into account the fact that this paper was written ten years ago, long before the 2000 elections and before more modern mathematical results like Chaum's; some of Dr. Shamos' opinions may have changed since then. While Dr. Neumann's talk cited here is of similar age, his pessimism with regard to machines has had little reason for change.) Rebecca Mercuri invented the “Mercuri...
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...Change Toward Two-Round Voting The controversial 2000 election in America was an eye-opener for change in our electoral system. The third party with similarities to the Democrats had stolen votes from the two bigger parties running for presidency, therefore the Republicans won. Implementing two-round voting will eliminate the problem of third parties captivating votes away from larger parties. Although, this electoral system may take longer, two-round voting is vital to put into action for it will select the best candidate for America. To a large number of Americans this may be a new concept, but is not new in the political world. According to Roberts, a political thinker, the first record of this system being employed is 1871-1918, practiced in the German empire and in New Zealand in 1908 and 1911 elections. The two-round system functions as, if no one wins 50 percent of the votes in the first round, all candidates, except the top two are dropped and voters vote a second time. In the second round, the candidate who wins the most votes is elected. By virtue of only the top two candidates moving on to the second round, the only way a candidate can win is by a majority vote; this electoral system is the most adequate way to have a country’s majority appoint a candidate. Two-round system is a further democratic way of voting considering only the popular-majority vote wins, without representatives choosing for the people. This provides smaller parties an opportunity to receive...
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...To what extent does social class influence voting behaviour? It is often said that social class is the key determinant in voting behaviour. When the next Government elections come up is it true that the middle and upper classes will vote for the Conservative Party and the working class vote for the Labour Party? Or is voter behaviour more complex than that? This essay explores how the impact of social class on voting behaviour has changed over the years. Social class was the main determinant of voting behaviour back in the 1960s because in the 1960s Britain was a country in which social class was much more apparent and easy to define. Broadly speaking, people were ‘categorised’ as the Upper Class, the Middle Class and the Working Class. The class based system influenced many people’s attitudes and actions, this included voting. This led to a stability of voting patterns, which meant that voting habits seemed to be consistent and predictable. Also at the time there was a level of class alignment. This relates to the strong association of membership of a social class with support for a political party. This meant that people in social classes A to C1 would tend to vote for the Conservative Party and those in social classes C2 to E would vote for the Labour Party. This is known as the “Marsh Theory”. The “Marsh Theory” suggests that there were two main dominant parties, Labour and Conservative in which people voted accordingly to their Social Class. However, this led to a Middle...
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...Voting Age In 1870 the fifteenth amendment was passed granting suffrage to men of color. Fifty years later the nineteenth amendment was passed granting suffrage to women, and another fifty years after that the twenty sixth amendment gave eighteen year olds right to vote. All of these amendments were steps toward ending discriminating, but the United States has one last step. If the America is going to truly provide equal representation for all people then it ought to grant suffrage to those of age 16 and up. Before proposing that the voting age should be lowered it is necessary to examine the arguments of those opposed. Those opposed to lowering the voting age make three main arguments. The first being that teens under the age of 18 lack the maturity and brain development to make an informed decisions for themselves. The second argument contends that voter turnout among young people is already dismal and lowering the voting age would have negligible effects. The last argument claims that there is no valid reason...
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...Bush won the election for president by winning Florida by a mere 537 votes. Many questions arose during that time regarding disenfranchisement. This included many individuals who were wrongly purged from registration and prevented from voting based on felony convictions that did not exist. Florida is one of the states which has a law permanently disenfranchising anyone with a felony conviction unless pardoned by the governor. Those legally disenfranchised and mistakenly barred from voting were disproportionately African-American. “Laws that disenfranchise because of criminal convictions are the primary means of excluding adult citizens from suffrage in the United States today. In 2010 approximately 5.3 million people could not vote due to criminal convictions.” (Dittmer, 2011) The majority of these individuals are either on probation, parole or have completed their sentences. They remain disenfranchised based on state law. “Due to racial disparities in the criminal justice system, African-Americans are disenfranchised at seven times the national average. The racial effect of these laws is no coincidence...
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...of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 signaled significant development, members of society often came to the conclusion that racial equality had been achieved. However, in reality, society was far from establishing this equality. Though, in writing, discrimination against individuals based on color could no longer take place, states still found ways to subtly put specific groups at a disadvantage. Even today, over half a century later, states continue to treat different groups of individuals unequally based on...
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...instead of going out to vote the only answer seems to be mandatory voting. Given all of the rights a U.S. citizen is given the least they could do is vote in government official elections and on significant laws and bills, and by making voting mandatory the United States can become a true democracy. In addition, if voting became mandatory then the poor and uneducated would get a voice in our government. However, many would argue, that with the right to vote comes the right not vote. In contrast, by no voting the people of the United States cannot choose what and who can uphold their rights and other personal liberties. Mandatory...
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...problem. On the other hand, quantitative research is as important as qualitative research. Telephone surveys, mail surveys as well as online surveys are the different surveys methods used. The sample size is very large and intends to have a good representation of the voting public. Random digit dialing and lists of addresses are used as the sampling strategy. The findings of this research intends to answer of internet voting is effective and a good alternative voting method in the sense that it reduces the costs of public elections but at the same time be reliable and credible. The total cost of implementing this proposal is averaging to about AU$ 121785. The study should take no more than 3 months to complete Previous research literature on this issue shows a couple of key findings that are crucial to this research. It is important to know the costs of previous elections. The background paper shows that the previous election cost more than $95 million. There has been no previous trials on internet voting anywhere in Australia. In the United States, there have been concerns that internet voting brings about racial discrimination. Further concerns have arisen about home voting via the internet as for the security concerns. Another key note for this research is that certain segments of this population have been identified as perceiving the internet as threatening. The...
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...Voting Rights Act of 1965 In 2013 the US Supreme Court ruled that Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was unconstitutional. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 has been the most powerful piece of civil rights legislation, and guaranteed political representation via popular vote. Moreover, Section 5 specifically necessitated selected areas with a history of voter discrimination to get approval from either the U.S. District Court for D.C. or the U.S. Attorney General before they amending voting processes. This was to preempt any minority voter disenfranchisement through the use of any variety of voting "test," such as a literacy test, educational or knowledge requirements, proof of good moral character, and requirements that a person must be vouched for in order to exercise their right to vote. It has also been updated to protect against the use of gerrymandering, prohibitive voting hours, and abusive ID requirements. Chief Justice Roberts delivered the majority opinion that ruled Section 4(b) as being unconstitutional. He described the Voting Rights Act as "strong medicine" for a time when minority voter disenfranchisement was nation wide. The Census Bureau has since reported that the number of African American voters in five of the nine states listed in the Voting Rights Act actually surpasses white voter turnout. The majority opinion granted that voter discrimination still exists, but questioned whether the laws outlined in Section 4(b) were truly the best means of...
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...Electronic Voting System TADAYOSHI KOHNO∗ A DAM S TUBBLEFIELD† DAN S. WALLACH§ February 27, 2004 AVIEL D. RUBIN‡ Abstract With significant U.S. federal funds now available to replace outdated punch-card and mechanical voting systems, municipalities and states throughout the U.S. are adopting paperless electronic voting systems from a number of different vendors. We present a security analysis of the source code to one such machine used in a significant share of the market. Our analysis shows that this voting system is far below even the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts. We identify several problems including unauthorized privilege escalation, incorrect use of cryptography, vulnerabilities to network threats, and poor software development processes. We show that voters, without any insider privileges, can cast unlimited votes without being detected by any mechanisms within the voting terminal software. Furthermore, we show that even the most serious of our outsider attacks could have been discovered and executed without access to the source code. In the face of such attacks, the usual worries about insider threats are not the only concerns; outsiders can do the damage. That said, we demonstrate that the insider threat is also quite considerable, showing that not only can an insider, such as a poll worker, modify the votes, but that insiders can also violate voter privacy and match votes with the voters who cast them. We conclude that this voting system...
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...past 240 years of being a nation, the citizens and lawmakers of the United States has continually prevented groups of people from voting in this democratic system. After this 2016 presidential election, now is again the time to restrict voting rights, but this time for those 65 and older. The United States has an increasing number of elderly people that have growing conservative views, such as a growing hate for same-sex marriage. The United States needs change towards a more liberal society, without a move towards more liberals, the United States will continue taking away rights of United States’ citizens because of different beliefs, such as gay marriage....
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