Election Test

Being elected into a position in an official office is not always left for the most qualified or those most likely to help the country, state, town, or whatever place they are running for in the election. Usually, elections become more of a popularity contest. If someone’s name is more widely recognized by the people, automatically that is the candidate pay most attention to. And whoever is paid attention to most, typically becomes one of the favorites. Candidates know this and turn to various campaign tactics in order to get their face and name easily recognized by a wide variety of people.

Candidates rely on campaign funding to get their message across. It could be hard money that is given directly to them, however, this money has a limit on how much they receive, so they often start depending on other organizations like political action committees (PACs). These PACs are private groups whose main goal is to raise money to elect someone into a position. Although PACs are limited in the amount of money they use to help out a candidate, candidates can have more than one PAC, thus creating a usually steady supply of income to their campaign. Although soft money, money not given directly to candidates, but still helps them out with the media, commercials, and other things, is considered illegal now, there are always loopholes candidates can use to continue to get more money, and therefore be more recognized. One of these loopholes is 527 groups, groups that not connected to any candidate, but can still influence voters. These groups usually have one issue they feel strongly about, like the environment or education and create commercials either attacking a candidate for doing something against what they believe, or praising candidates who help whatever cause there group is for. Since these groups do not give any money directly to campaigns, there is no limit on how much they spend during campaigns, however, they can still end up helping a candidate a lot during the election process.

In addition to money flowing into the campagin, candidates rely on the media for many of their votes. Candidates are always trying to promote themselves doing good things for the community and staging different photoshoots. Yes, these photoshoots probably help, but it is also the media and news organizations that has an even bigger impact. First, there is always a media bias, partiality to a specific candidate or political party within the media. Different news stations have a different bias and portray candidates in either favoring or negative ways. The political party, a group that each candidate belongs to, either liberal or conservative, that shows their main ideals, that a candidate belongs to can automatically set up for biases within the media. FOX might choose to run an hour long special on how “wonderful” a conservative candidate is, but only spend five minutes discussing liberal candidates, and in thost five minutes mention only the things they have done wrong. Just the opposite could be done on liberal news networks. The problem is, many people do not pay enough attention to both sides of a story to actually understand the biases being shown.

The fact that so few people really care about biases in media and just believe everything that is being told to them leads to a low voter turnout. The number of people elligible to vote and the number of people who do vote are very different numbers. This is because many people are complacent when it comes to the government and what goes on in it, so they decide not to vote. In some cases low voter turnout helps candidates, because the people who would be voting against them do not vote, so they can end up winning. But it could also hurt them because people who would vote for them, do not. Although a low turnout may not be ideal for candidates, it helps the country. People who do not know what they are voting for typically do not vote, leaving only the people who know what’s going on to vote. By doing this, we are not getting random votes from people who do not know what’s going on and are simply voting to vote and checking off random candidates. This creates a nation filled with decisions made by informed voters, not just guesses on the ballot. Candidates need to reach out to the small percentage of people who do vote to get their message across. Or they can try to reach out to the people who choose not to vote and get them to vote, creating a more informed America.

~Kym Baroni

Civil Liberties Test

One of the most noticeable “freedoms” that our country has is also one of the things that can be most controversial. The first amendment gives us the freedom of speech and of the press, allowing Americans to speak what is on their mind as well as publish what they find newsworthy. However, this amendment also gets many citizens in trouble because they take their freedoms a little bit too far. In the Near v. Minnesota case a newspaper wanted to publish an embarrassing story about a politician, however the government stopped that story from printing because of its libelous material. The Supreme Court ended up ruling this unconstitutional due to prior restraint and the newspaper got their freedoms back and was able to publish whatever they wanted again. In this case the government tried protecting the politician while diminishing the freedoms of the newspaper.

Another similar instance of the freedom of speech and of the press being overshadowed was in the Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier case in which a high school newspaper was going to publish a story about divorce and teen pregnancy, but the principal refused to let them to protect the students and families who appeared in the article. In this case, however, the principal won and the paper was not allowed to print the story due to in loco parentis where the school acts as the parents while the students are in school. Although the papers first amendment freedoms were overruled and priority was given to the protection of the students, the idea of censorship in all news agencies, whether it be in school or on a local or national level, is a tough subject. Schools are allowed to take away some of the freedoms of students in order to protect them since they are still minors.

The fifth amendment which deals with due process also has issues with freedom and protection. Before the Gideon v. Wainright and Miranda v. Arizona cases, among others, were brought to trial the government had very few rules about what criminals could do before going to court. However, after the Miranda v. Arizona case, the court process became smoother and more fair for those involved with it. Beforehand, when someone was arrested they were not given their rights and basically went to court blindly, however, after the Miranda case police are now inclined to read off the Miranda Rights so as to protect the freedoms of those being incriminated. Even though while going into courts many criminals are losing some of their freedoms, the governement and court systems are still trying to give them adequate protection so they do not disobey any laws and say something in the courts that could end up getting them in jail, even if they really were not guilty. By giving them these protections, the government is essentially giving criminals a higher chance of remaining free.

Another case which has shown the effects of protection and freedoms is Mapp v. Ohio, which deals with the fourth amendment. The fourth amendment is about unreasonable search and seizure to protect people from having the government come to their property and perform random searches without a warrant. In Mapp v. Ohio the police performed a search and gathered incriminating evidence, however, it was done without a warrant. Although this could be the police protecting the people around Mapp to try to find the bombing suspect, it infringed on Mapp’s freedoms by breaking into his house and actually finding evidence for a completely different and new crime by finding obscene literature. Since the police had no warrant and none of the evidence found was for the case they were working on, charges were dropped and the exclusionary rule was added in.

~Kym Baroni