Presidental election

I was really happy to have the chance to talk to some students in the student center. First, I did my survey with 4 guys and 4 girls to make it balanced (no discrimination) and I was looking for different ages between 20 to 30 years old . Then, I did my survey during the lunch time which made me looking for some people who are not eating or studying because in Saudi Arabia it is not polite to disturb someone while he/she is eating. So, when I saw students talking to each other I jumped in the front of them and said "good afternoon, I am a student in the english language program and I am doing this survey as a project for one of my classes, so do you have a minute to do it?". I found the people very helpful and cool but I really saw that white people are more friendly when I asked them, for example when I asked some white people to do the survey they said yes or sure and some of them were smiling but when I asked the blacks, they just moved their hands to take the paper and to do the survey without saying one single word and when I said thank you they didn't reply. The most interesting thing was in a table of three girls, when I asked them to do the survey one girl answered me and said "yes we can do it" but one of her friends said "say i can do it not we can" and we laughed, then she said to me i am joking we can do it. Let me share with you my results and my group's results :

(my personal results , my group's results)

Male: (4,13) Female: (4,21)
Democrat (4,26) Republican (2,4) Other (2,4)
Do you know about the system of electors?
Yes: (6,26) No: (2,8)
Do you think the Electoral College system is fair?
Yes: (5,12) No: (3,22)
Who would have a better chance against McCain
Obama: (8,27) Clinton: (0,7)
Check the statements you agree with.
(3,17)Hillary has more experience than Obama.
(6,23)Obama can unit people and offer change.
(0,3)Experience is more important than uniting people and offering change.
(0,3)Ron Paul hurt Huckabee`s campaign by staying in the race.
Which states will be most important in the general election? Name three.
CA: (7,27) TX: (4,21) NY: (6,12)
FL: (2,12) OH: (3,11) AL: (1,0)
IO: (1,0) IL: (0,8) WI: (0,1)
NH: (0,1) VA: (0,1)

I think that our survey was very interesting because it was in the middle of some important event in us. I think this election is very important because there are two new things: black man and woman. I saw that many people were interested in Obama especially the afro-americans. Moreover I found that some people decided to be neither Democrat nor Republican which makes me very happy because if I can vote I will vote for the green party. I really support this party because there are many people that are destroying the environment and doing some negative things that affected our planet. I hope that the green party win for one time and one of them be the president of the US to start a serious steps to solve some of the environmental problems like global warming and deforestation. In addition, in my sample I found that all of the people who don't know about the system of electors were girls and the people who don't think that the Electoral College system is fair, were 2 girls one black. Finally, I found that most of the people were confused while answering the last question and I used to think that people in US are caring about the political issues in the world but I feel like there not many people are interested in these issues especially the students in the range between 20 to 30. In contrast, people in saudi arabia are crazy about the political issues in the world because there are many events happened around us like in Irag, Iran and Palestine.

Presidental election

I did the research with total 8 persons in Student Center, including 3 male and 5 female among whom there are 7 Democrats and the other one is neither a Democrat nor a Republic. I asked the questions below:
Research paper
(number of person)(personal/group)
Do you know about the system of electors?
Yes: 7/26 No: 1/8
Do you think the Electoral College system is fair?
Yes: 1/12 No: 7/22
Who would have a better chance against McCain
Obama: 7/27 Clinton:1/7
Check the statements you agree with.
(4/17)Hillary has more experience than Obama.
(7/23)Obama can unit people and offer change.
(0/3)Experience is more important than uniting people and offering change.
(0/2)Ron Paul hurt Huckabee`s campaign by staying in the race.
Which states will be most important in the general election? Name three.
CA: 7/27 TX: 2/12 NY: 4/12
FL: 3/12 IL: 4/8 OH : 3/11
NH: 1/1 VA: 0/1 WI: 0/1
AL: 0/1 IO: 0/1
First, according to this table, more than half people do not think that the Electoral College is fair. Also, people trust Obama more than Clinton to compete with McCain. In this year`s election, many people agree that Hillary has more experience than Obama and Obama can unit people and offer change. The CA, NY and FL are considered to be the most important states ing the general election. Second, when I talk to the people, most of them reacted like asking their private questions and they do not like talk about it until I told them I am just a CESL student. This means that everyone concerns about the presidential election and makes full use of their elective right . However, before I do this research, I believe that experience is more important and more likely to win the election. Now I know that in America if a person wants to succeed, you must get good term with the public and you should know that everyone will use their rights to bring themselves the biggest benefits. Maybe it sounds selfish, but it is reasonable. In addition, I learned that in the general election the state which could lead the candidates to win is not because of the population and land size of the state, the decisive factor is that those states which are neither big or small but are not partyloyalty. Those states always change their minds of supporting the candidates. Third, I think the election wastes a lot of money for advertising and some other costs. Therefore, I can not believe that the electoral system works very well as the American government said.

Fixing the Broken Presidential Nomination Process

Fixing the Broken Presidential Nomination Process
By John, D.

The system of election has become more complicateand more expensive. First problem is that election is over before everyone has a chance to vote for primary. Today, election system is a contest of money raising and organization. Second problem is that because of states' greed, they force candidates to be busy with crazy schedule and campaigning money. He points that even some people can be good leader, they cannot try because they do not have power, money for election, and a huge number of people who can support them. Also, he points the problem of election in a day. If people in all states vote a same day, candidate will focus few large states for more votes; therefore small states were ignored. Moreover, he suggests that election system should be a variation of a regional primary. Even though many people recognize the problems of election system, it cannot be changed because of powerful people who benefit, right now. He criticize that both sides of parties do not want to fix problems of election system because they afraid they will lose advantages. He emphasize that if we cannot this small problem of election, we cannot fix the big real problem for America.

I totally agree about this article. I think he points well about the problems of election of America. I want to add something more; however, his thinking and organization are absolutely better than me. I hope that before we start the project about this, we should check and discuss about the election system enough.

Jiyoung Lee - EAP2
Sorry, I couldn't find the ID. So I just posted here.

Presidential election:The leader picked in the United States

In each party, there is a competition among the delegates called primaries and caucuses. Each party establishes their own rules to start the competition. The primaries are electoral contest between or among contenders for the nomination of each party and the caucuses are graduated election with the party members voting for delegates to the next level. The level from low to high is the precinct level, the district level, the town or city and then the whole country level. During starting the levels, the candidates of each party are chosen by each party. Another crucial constituents of the electoral system is the elector who are selected by the individual states on the ground of the rule established by each states and represent the number of congressmen and senators in each state. The number of electors are based on the proportionate number to the population of members of the House of Representatives. Then it is a “winner-take-all” situation. That means if a delegate or contender gets most votes of a state, he or she possesses all the votes of the electors in this state. At last, the member of College of Electors from 50 states and the District of Columbia get together and cast their votes for the president and vice-president of the United States. The candidates who get the highest number of votes win.
In this paper, I am really curious about the steps to elect the president of the United States of America, especially the rule called “winner-take-all”. Is this rule works efficiently? Also, I have noticed that the president, in each year election, can only be the Republicans or Democrats, even though there many other parties. So why do the elector or the constituencies who select the electors only vote for the candidates from the Democratic Party or Republican Party. Otherwise, I think the rights divided into several parts which handled by the Congress, the Senate, the House of representatives and the president is the most important factor to keep the presidential election being fair and minimizing the possibility of fraud and to work efficiently.

Haoming Qin

The US electoral system: A closer look at how it works

Bateman’s (2008) article entitled "The US electoral system: A closer look at how it works", she introduces the topic of Americans electoral system and how it works. First, she shows the production of the electoral system and how the electors are selected; Who are they representing? How are their votes being determined? Next, she says that all of the parties do their best to get the electors' votes by the delegates who are being selected by the primaries and caucuses and there is voting inside each party for the presidential and vice- presidential candidates. Then she explains the election process and there are two ways of election; one is by the electors’ votes and the other one is by the popular votes. She shows that the government supports the candidates in each party before the election and after. Finally, she talks about the peculiarities of America’s politics and how the electoral system is flexible in one side and inflexible in another. In conclusion this article mainly talks about the electoral system step by step and gives many details about the parties' efforts to present their candidates.

I was interested in this article because of the current event, which is the presidential election here in US. When I see the news I found it difficult to understand the processes of the election and I didn't understand what the different was between the electors and the popular elections. I am from the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, so we don't vote for our king and we are not used to seeing the voting in Saudi Arabia. So when I see the voting in any country, I can't stop my curiosity to see the event and to understand how it is going. One more important point I would like to say is that US is one of the effective countries in the world where I can see her weight in the UN in any resolution, so I think it is important to understand how this country vote and chooses its president.

post here

These Newstalk group blogs are on an old CESL weblog system (CESL 06) so they have a different log-on. To log-on to these, try cesl06@yahoo.com as logon. Same password! Good luck!