Until Next Time

During the last 4 weeks, the Voter Watch Blog team researched and wrote about the reasons and outcomes of voter apathy, voter turnout, and the accessibility to the polls. We also wrote about the Electoral College, the importance of popular vote, and how voter ID laws affect us. We decided to touch on those important topics because we felt those are the ones that have been specially under fire during the last 5 elections. 

With the usage of facts and a neutral stand point on the political spectrum, we hope we have been able to inform and motivate you– the voter. We hope you found our blogs posts not only informative, but also inspiring.

We would like to thank every single one of your for giving us a few minutes of your time to read our weekly posts. Also, we would like to thank you for reading our points of view and other information that might have been in conflict with your personal believes and ideas. We thank you for your open mind and for your time.

Sincerely,

The Voter Watch Blog

Your Vote, Your Voice!

Voting Accessibility: Time Stands Still for No Man!

Voting is one of the key components to a democracy. Knowing that, you would think it would be an easy and smooth process to go out and vote. According to an article on Americaprogress.org in North Carolina African American voters had to wait two hours due to technical difficulties.

This led to less voting participation and thus low voter turnout. Let’s not forget, voting takes place on a weekday. Even if it’s for most of the day, it’s still a weekday. Meaning that young adults have classes to attend to and/or work, and the older population 25-40 have work to attend to. People don’t have all day to wait in line to vote and thus end up not voting in all. Accessibility to voting polls is an issue in the United States that should’ve been taken care of years ago.

Also according to Americanprogress.org in North Carolina there were 158 less polling places in 40 counties. If people not only have to risk being late to work/school waiting in long lines but also have to travel longer distances to get to a polling place, what makes you think they’ll go in the first place. Voters can’t all risk calling off work or/and school to stay in line for hours and vote. Let’s not forget what happens when the machines malfunction and cause a polling place to cease it’s activates until fixed. Polling places shouldn’t be harder to get to than your local DMV/MVA and should be an easier and smooth process. These annoyances to quick and/or easy voting accessibility play a part in the over voter turnout and the will to want to participate at all. We need to make more polling places easily available and make the overall process more efficient. This way all eligible voters have an equal opportunity to get to the polls and have an easier time gaining access to the polls.

Did States Made it Harder for Americans to Vote in the 2016 Elections?

“All of this falls on top of the wave of restrictions that states passed in time for the 2012 election”

Election Night! Wait who Won???

The SNL you are about to watch  is a clip using satire to describe how people were during election night all the way up to the final results. People forget how others think and lie to themselves in the process. The night Trump was elected president of the United States the country was in shock. Some people expected the results and others were “shocked” at what happened. Now just realizing the injustices that can occur in the United States.

Democratic public attitudes and political participation

This short paragraph will explain certain facts that shape the American electoral system by providing data obtained using a combination of aggregate and comparative survey data.

According to Powell, despite the relatively favorable citizen attitudes, voter turnout in American national elections is far below the average of 80% of the eligible electorate that votes in other industrialized nations. Surprisingly another fact indicates that the United States overpasses any other democratic nation in political awareness within its citizens.

How is a nation who is politically aware not interested in voting? The institutional context by which individuals act such as legal rules, social and political structures and configuration of partisanship all shape and have a big effect on an individual’s choices, making it hard for an individual to change his/her beliefs.

The United states is advantaged about 5% by political attitudes, but disadvantaged 13% by the party system and institutional factors.l and up to 14% by the registration laws. 

Powell, G. American Voter Turnout in Comparative Perspective. The American Political Science Review, 80(1), 17-43. doi:10.2307/1957082