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.

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.