Elections

Electoral College

          The Electoral College are people representing the states in the United States, who vote in the election for the president and vice president. Since Electoral college has started, it received a lot of criticism because it lets the nominees to win the election without taking the popular vote into account.

"In Defense of The Electoral College"

The article In Defense of The Electoral College by the Washington post focuses on protecting the electoral college system. They believe that the system is effective to run an election. They quote, "But the founders were not interested in efficiency; they were interested in securing 'the blessings of liberty.' The electoral college is in the end, not a bad device for securing that". meaning that it not a bad way to work the election votes.

Vox Believes Electoral College Is The Worst

          The perspective of the article is, "Why the Electoral College is the Absolute Worst, Explained," by Vox which is the current situation of the Electoral College system is corrupt. They believe that it is not fair that the popular does not get taken into account. 

Comparing and Contrasting The Articles

          There are a couple ways to compare the articles. They both state claims made by each other's side and use their evidence to back themselves up. Another, both of the articles are posted by both white and male, which completely shows and tells us "who has more power and has more knowledge about Electoral College."

The author of Vox

Authors of The Washington Post

           The only difference that I can make is that their point of view in argument is different and the Authors of The Washington Post do not agree with most of the Vox post unlike the Vox post itself. 

In conclusion, I agree with that the Electoral College system is not the best and effective way to run an election. However I can also understand where Vox is coming from.

Media

Syria Refugee Crisis

250,000 Syrians lost their lives because of the civil war and 11 million were forced to leave their homes due to the civil war. This issue is still however continuing still to this day. The Syria Refugee Crisis started in the beginning of March 2011 and the conflict has been a power struggle between the military groups and the nations. According to BBC, The United Nations said that 90,000 people have been killed in the conflict.

It later then climbed up to 150,000 according to the activists and the United Nations. The United

Nations provides evidence that all of the parties to have conflict, committed war crimes such as murder, torture, rape, and enforced disappearances. Some they were accused of blockage of food, water, and health services as one of the tactics in the war.

When searching up this topic, I first used google and used in the key term, 'Syria refugee crisis'. I went through some articles until I found one that best brought my attention and was reliable to get information from. 

Political Parties and Politicians

Democratic Party

The Democratic Party is one of the two main and oldest existing political parties in the United States. Democrats are sometimes referred to as "the Party of the People," because they focus on issues such as contain immigrants, women and minorities. They believe that the federal government should focus more on people's lives, especially the ones who are in need.

One of the Issues that still continues today that is strongly supported by the Democratic Party is Immigration. In the Democratic party platform, under 'What we believe', in 'Fixing our Broken Immigration System', it talks about their stance on Immigration. Their views, which is stated in democrats.org, "The Democratic Party supports legal immigration, within reasonable limits, that meets the needs of families, communities, and the economy as well as maintains the United States' role as a beacon of hope for people seeking safety, freedom, and security. People should come to the United states with visas and not through smugglers. Yet, we recognize that the current immigration system is broken." In other words, the Democratic Party supports immigration but as long as they get through the border with visas. 

Politician: Donald Trump

Donald Trump is the current president of the United States and is on his second year of presidency. He is part of the Republican party and his goal along being one of his most used quote, is to, "Make America Great Again." In the Transcript of Donald Trump's Immigration Speech, Trump gives a speech on his point of view of the topic on Illegal Immigration. Before Donald Trump became president, he gave his speech in Arizona about him meeting with Mexico's president Enrique Pena Nieto. It is stated that they both agreed and came to terms to ending drugs, guns, and illegal immigrants coming to the United States, "We agree on the importance of ending the illegal flow of drugs, cash, guns, and people across our border, and to put the cartels out of business." There was a compromise that they will have a goal to fix immigration system and prevent anything more illegal coming to the United States. Donald Trump also states, "Let me tell you who it does not serve. It does not serve you the American People." He believes that the way the immigration system works right now with the open borders and lower wages is that it is only helping the immigrants and not the american citizens. He wants immigration to be improving laws and policies to make life better for the U.S citizens. In order to start fixing the immigration system, he quotes, "For instance, we have to listen to the concerns that working people, our forgotten working people, have over the record pace of immigration and it's impact on their jobs, wages, housing, schools, tax bills and general living conditions." In other words, In order to make the immigration system work, we first need to think about how it impacted us. He tells us that the United States lacks a good security system since many american citizen lives were taken away because of illegal immigrants. He then gives a couple examples of the many people who have their lives stolen from immigrants and shares the statistics of how many illegal immigrants were arrested in the U.S and the total cost a year in 2011

POV

Democrats are fighting for all the immigrants who feel threatened and scared by Donald Trump's presidency. They will not stand and watch families be torn apart and stand up to Trump and his idea to defend the border. Democrats will work to fix the broken immigration system, improve border security, and prioritize enforcement to target illegal criminals and not innocent families seeking a better life.

President Donald Trump believes children of illegal immigrants shouldn't not be granted citizenship and immigrants should not be allowed to hold dual citizenship status. He is very passionate about increasing restrictions on its current border security policy and build a wall that Mexico will pay for. In other words, Trump doesn't want immigrants to have any of the privilege that Americans receive.  

Comparison

The two artifacts are similar in a way because they both agree on illegal immigrants with criminal records to be deported and have stricter border security. 

Conclusion

Taken everything into account, political parties and politicians influence an individual's political beliefs by when a politic wishes to be reelected for office or remain in office, they would cater to whatever the citizens want. 

Interest groups

Abortion has been performed and a controversial topic for thousands of years. The term abortion is described to stop a pregnancy to take action. There are two types of abortions, induced abortions and accidental abortions which are known to be called miscarriages. However, people have different views on induced abortions. In the liberal interest group for abortion, liberals choose pro choice over pro life because they believe women should have the freedom and right over what happens to their bodies, even if it means ending a life of a baby. Conservatives choose pro life because they feel like it is wrong and it should be illegal to end a the life of a child, regardless of the situation. In this topic, liberals believe that a fetus is not entirely a human life therefore, a woman has the right to have an abortion and that the government should provide taxpayer funded abortions for the women who are not able to afford to pay for it. Conservatives believe that we should stick to our traditions and not kill a life that was meant to be here. (Conservatives vs. Liberal Beliefs)

          Planned Parenthood is a liberal interest group that was founded 100 years ago and fight to protect the rights of women. To advance reproductive rights, they educate and organize the public about women's rights and health. This group writes blogs about situations containing the rights of women's bodies and inform people about it and what they can do to help prevent women's rights being taken away.

  Another Interest group Pro-Life Action League is a conservative interest group that is against abortion. They were founded in 1980 with the aim of supporting unborn children through a non-violent direct action. This group writes blogs commonly about what Planned Parenthood fails to recognize and what people can do to support life.




Interest groups influence an individual's political beliefs by lobbying government (an activist who seeks to persuade members of the government to enact legislation that would only benefit their group), engaging in election activities (Interest groups attempt to influence elections to help people who support their issues to get elected or reelected), educating the public, and mobilizing various publics (writing letters, making phone calls, and contacting policy-makers).

My Political Typology

My name is Alyssa Woodbury and I am a female student in Summit Public Schools. According to my results from http://www.people-press.org/quiz/political-typology/, I am a Democratic opportunist. I believe people should have their opportunities and work together.

Opportunity Democrats
12% of Adult population
13% of registered votes
13% of politically engaged

Values
Opportunity Democrats have liberal behaviors on most issues such as the environment, immigration, and the LGBT+ community. This group stands out from other Democratic groups because of their own beliefs that working hard is enough for almost everyone to achieve.

Political Behavior
Opportunity Democrats are more likely than other group to characterize their own political perspective as average. 86% of the majority people disapprove of Trump's presidency performance for the past year he has been elected. However, Opportunity Democrats are not as likely to feel too strong of a disapproval for trump than the Solid Liberals or Disaffected Democrats.

The people

About 57% in the Opportunity Democrats group are non-Hispanic whites. The others, 14% black and 20% Hispanic. 34% are also college graduates and 30% are not with a college experience. 

Personal Beliefs:

• Businesses should have the opportunity to expand. Even though I think business corporations make too much profit, they have all the right to have their opportunities.
• I believe that the United States should focus on themselves and our own problems first and then help other countries to ensure peace with them. It's harder to help others when we as a country can't help ourselves first.
• My opinion is that everyone should be accepted in society regardless of social values, race, and immigration. I feel that our country should still make changes to give everyone equal rights considering there is lots of sexism, racism, and homophobia today that restrict people to live their lives normally.
• It was really hard to answer these set of Social Safety Net questions considering the fact that poor people do and don't have it easy. It is understandable that poor people struggle living their everyday lives, but they also get benefit that people in middle or higher classes don't receive and few don't need to contribute much in society. I also believe that the government could only do so much to help out as well.
• I feel that the government does do a lot of work than what people credit for. People are too quick to point out and judge mistakes rather than good things. Some people only see the negative things since that is what gets more acknowledged by society.
• Anything to keep our planet as best as we can, I feel like environmental laws and regulations are worth the cost. However, If we ourselves did a little more recycling, prevent fires, etc., there wouldn't be a need for high expenses.

Similarities:

Some things that set opportunity democrats apart are topics such as Stances on Military. I believe that we should increase the spending on our military for protective reasons and not have our country be vulnerable, but I also can agree on decreasing the cost on our military to strive more for world peace. 

Another reason being a part of this ideology group allows me to identify my political stance in issues such as Immigration. I believe that undocumented Immigrants should be able to stay for opportunities, but I could understand stronger enforcement actions on the border considering the crime rates and for our country's safety. For problems like these I would select as an average vote. 

Differences between me and my ideology:

Although there are some key similarities between me and my ideology, there are a few differences. The first difference I have is the idea on abortion. I have always wondered if I were pregnant in my school years, would I receive an abortion? Would I drop out of school to raise an unwanted child? As much as I wouldn't want to, I know it would be best for me. I should be able to have the right over my body and other women should as well. Some people mistake being pregnant is something all women do carelessly. Rape is so common, but some people seem to forget it's a problem in today's society. Some people are also uneducated that sometimes a child has no hope to live since there's so many problems such as diseases and disabilities. 

Another difference are gay rights. As much as someone may disagree on gay marriage or equality due to religious reasons, LGBT people should have as much of a right as people who aren't. I believe it's fine to not agree personally, but to attempt to discriminate the community is another story. LGBT can be something that is disliked by others, but it is never wrong.