In the past two Presidential elections, voter confidence has been compromised. The adoption of electronic voting machines and inherent flaws in the process have left many wondering if the General Election even matters anymore. Over fifty years ago we faced a time when certain segments of society were disenfranchised of their votes. While it isn’t as blatant, there are still people in this country who are being shut out.Americahas many hurdles to climb if they are to ever honestly claim “one man, one vote.” To makeU.S.elections truly democratic there are many things that need to change.

The biggest hurdle in fair Presidential elections is the persistence of the Electoral College. This organization is the actual entity responsible for selecting the President. The Electors in a state are expected to vote in the same way their state did. While they can change their mind the majority of Electors do stick with the way their state voted. On the surface it seems like a more formal way of documenting the popular vote, but the system is prone to being upset and not reflecting the true will of the American people.

The Electoral College robs the individual of their voice. A Conservative voting in a heavily liberal state does not as strong of voice as one in a state where political opinion is more evenly split. This unbalanced system can lead to the candidate with the most votes losing the election. It has only happened four times, most recently in the 2000 Presidential race. Unfortunately, there is no proviso in the Constitution to allow for this rare occurrence.

It would be hard to argue that the current Electoral system can be unfair. It is confusing that a country that claims democracy would not let the people have complete control over who leads them. Why in only the Presidential race does one man’s vote not count as one vote for their chosen candidate? The logical solution is to pass an amendment allowing the popular vote to decide the outcome of Presidential elections. Unfortunately, this would only be a baby step towards healing voter confidence– the last election left the American people with more technical concerns.Imagine your casting your vote for Homecoming Queen your senior year. This year the Student Council has decided to “update” the way they tally the votes. Instead of sketching an “X” next to the name of the girl you find most deserving (or attractive) you must whisper it into the ear of the Math Club President. After everybody has filed through and whispered in his ear he calculates the final results in his head. He announces the results, and the new Homecoming Queen and the Math Club President walk to the lunchroom and start making out. This sounds a little fishy, so you approach the Principal to see if there can be a recount. He assures you he’ll fix it and asks you to follow him. In the lunchroom the Principal breaks up the two love birds (the female lovebird looking relieved for the break) and demands a recount. The Math Club President takes a quick glance at the Homecoming Queen. “She won,” he says, “go bother somebody else now.This little scenario might sound ridiculous. What decent student would allow this sort of thing to go on? Surely the other potentialQueenswould not let this go? Unfortunately that’s exactly what happened in the 2004 Presidential election. To bridge the “technological gap” of paper ballets many states adopted electronic voting machines. So many states did this that 80% of the results were supplied by two companies: Election Systems & Software and Diebold Election Systems.In trying to get in line with technological standards election officials have compromised the security of the voting process. They claimed electronic voting would make the process more exact and secure, but it’s done anything but. Voting machines used in the last election have since been shown to have many untraceable security flaws. Some were hacked over a network.Princetonlater did a study proving how an intermediate hacker could influence the vote tally. Before the election the President of Diebold even said in a fund-raising letter that he would ensure Bush received more votes inOhio. Senator Chuck Hagel, chairman of ES&S, was the first republican to win a Nebraskan seat in 24 years. His voting machines were used in the Nebraskan elections and lead to urban communities voting Republican (by a large margin) for the first time.

While no conclusive evidence has come to light regarding tampering with these machines there is no real way to validate the vote. The machines only store the data. There is no paper trail. This concerned many voters. Many requested paper ballets when they went to the poles. In many communities where a large investment had been made in the voting equipment people requiring paper ballets were quickly turned away. How can we trust the election results when the only way to verify them is by processing the data they may have been compromised? Who can be trusted to fix this?

Legislation is currently evolving that would require a paper trail, as well as a publicly accessible copy of the source code that runs the machines. Every citizen needs to contact their Representatives inWashingtonand let them know this is a top priority.

There are many factors contributing to the dearth of voter confidence in this coming election. Americans are honor bound to act. Would there even be anAmericaif a few people hadn’t stood up and said “This is wrong!” There may not be enough time to fix all the issues with the current election process, but if even one of these problems can be resolved before the 2008 elections it would significantly increased the chance that every voice is deafening.

Popularity: 100% [?]

Talk of impeachment has been in the news a lot recently, and this discussion is not only limited to the current President. Dennis Kucinich is currently sponsoring a bill to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney. Many people say that this is a futile gesture this close to another election. Ironically, many who say this fought to impeach Bill Clinton in the late twentieth century. Though the power in this country is about to change hands it’s not too late to hold Cheney accountable.

Cheney has done many things to get him to this point. The greatest crime he has committed is the lies he spread to the American people. He gave inconclusive evidence to justify the war in Iraq, and when he found out how faulty it was pressured the CIA to change their findings. He lied to us about WMD’s, and he lied about a strong connection between Iraq and al Qaeda. This has become a self-fulfilling prophecy as our continued occupation of Iraq has allowed al Qaeda to take hold in the land. In a war the Downing Street memo has proved was pre-meditated Cheney found a way to sell the American people on a senseless war.

Cheney was also involved in the outing of CIA officer Valerie Plame. They exposed her to the press because her husband, a former ambassador, had negative things to say about the Bush White House. This retaliatory action solidifies the arguments for impeachment. Outing a CIA operative is a treasonous offence, punishable by death. Why then is somebody who has actively taken part in treason continuing to serve in one of our highest public offices? The law says this Benedict Arnold should be executed, yet he advises the president of matters of high security. He actively endangers our way of life by leading us down a warmonger’s path.

Now, Cheney looks to start a new war. Iran has shown no signs of aggression towards the United States. The lies start again. They have not threatened our unconstitutional occupation of Iraq. They do not harbor terrorists. They have given America no reason to back-handedly suggests nuclear options. Their leader has not claimed Iran has no homosexuals, only that they are not as open about it over there. And now a significant amount of Americans actually believe that the Iranians have directly threatened our country because of the lies of our vice-president.

Kucinich’s movement to impeach the vice-President is active in congress right now. This is a non-partisan issue. If we as a country can attempt to impeach a man for lying about an affair we are honor-bound to impeach a man for lying about a war that has killed thousands of people and taken the reigns of revolution out of Iraqi people’s hands.

54% of Americans want Cheney impeached. Remember, it’s never too late to see justice served…

Popularity: 81% [?]

We’re gearing up for another presidential campaign, and we have some serious domestic issues on our hands. Large parts of New Orleans still look like a war zone two years after Hurricane Katrina, the Administration is dragging its collective feet on what if anything to do about global warming, the country’s infrastructure is crumbling, our children are being poisoned by lead-containing toys manufactured on the cheap in China, people around the country are getting sick from tainted food produced in an environment of voluntary regulation and quality control, six years after No Child Left Behind our children still lag in math and science knowledge compared to kids in countries like Latvia and Hungary, every other week we hear about yet another scientific report being rewritten or suppressed by political hacks at NASA or NIH, and the real estate market is in a state of imminent collapse.

In other words, there are plenty of urgent and weighty topics for the candidates to address – topics which affect the daily lives of ordinary Americans. But are we hearing the candidates talking passionately about education, health care, and rebuilding roads and bridges? We are not. Instead, we’re hearing the same relentless drum beat of scaremongering and tough-guy posturing that we heard last time. It didn’t lead us anywhere good then, and there’s no reason to believe that things will be different this time around.

In interviews and debates, the candidates are concentrating on issues calculated to appeal to people’s emotions, especially to their fears. The War on Terror. The horrors of gay marriage. Illegal immigration. All these issues focus on groups outside the American mainstream (Islamofacists, the gay community, brown-skinned foreigners who don’t speak English) and define their members as the amorphous and sinister “them,” as opposed to the good all-American “us” who, so we’re told, are under attack by “them.” The underlying message is that it’s a big scary world out there and there are bad guys who are out to get us, so we must trust Uncle (or Auntie) Candidate to keep us safe. This is no time, apparently, to worry about unimportant matters like health care access and educational standards because our very existence is at stake.

They’re falling over themselves to out-do each other on how tough they’d be on Osama bin Laden if they caught him, while not mentioning that he’s presently sheltering in a country (Pakistan) whose President is a friend of the US government. They’re parroting the slogan that “we’re fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here,” as if Middle Eastern terrorists are incapable of finding their way to the United States as long as there are US troops in Iraq. They’re debating constitutional amendments to outlaw gay marriage, as though the prospect of gay people getting married poses a greater threat to the livelihood of ordinary Americans than tainted food, polluted water, and the prospect of foreclosure. They’re foaming at the mouth about illegal immigrants while corporations shift jobs overseas and slash health care and pension benefits. They’re making fine speeches about freedom and accountability while letting the Administration get away with wiretapping, eavesdropping, and supporting repressive regimes which happen to be friendly. And if the American people raise their voices to object to this cynical manipulation, they invite the accusation of being unpatriotic in this time of war.

The candidates are insulting the intelligence of the American people by treating them like scared children. They seem to believe that if they play on people’s fears and prejudices, ordinary Americans won’t notice that the things which actually do affect their lives are falling apart. It worked last time, and we’ve had four years of steadily declining standards as a result. This time, we shouldn’t let them get away with it.

Popularity: 82% [?]

Much has been written about the conservative ideologue Ann Coulter, most of it negative. Her critics generally paint her as a harmless, if not foul, voice of an older generation. This is a dangerous underestimation, however. In reality Coulter is more of a threat to the consciousness of America than the liberals she so often blames.

Most of her arguments can be broken down into all the stereotypes one might find on an episode of The Simpsons: the black criminal, the lazy Mexican, the greedy Jew. But while The Simpsons pick at these stereotypes to point out their absurdity, Coulter tries to assert that these are realities, that every person of a certain persuasion behaves a certain way almost across the board. While anybody who has lived in a mixed community knows that everybody can exhibit these qualities, those in a more rural community have nothing to dissuade them from these bigoted ideas.

No rational conservative would say in a public discussion that women should not have the right to vote, yet they cheer Coulter on when she makes such statements. When Ann Coulter said that Christians were “perfected Jews” on CNBC’s The Big Idea in 2007 one would think that there would have been an outcry from conservative Jews. Instead several Jewish radio hosts contended her comments were not anti-Semitic.

It is surprising to learn that Coulter is a huge fan of the Grateful Dead. One would think that spending hours with self-proclaimed radicals would have made her more tolerant to other viewpoints. It seems the only thing she really picked up in those smoke-filled venues was a love for listening to old men play the same songs they were playing twenty years ago with a slightly better lighting set-up. Coulter, above all else, protects a status quo that was horribly out of fashion by the time she was born.

The real problem with Ann Coulter is the way she paints member of the opposing party. With book titles like “How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)” and “Godless: The Church of Liberalism,” she creates an image of the Left as heathen monsters. This encourages the human need to sort things into little boxes. Ergo, somebody on the “right” should never mix with somebody on the “left” because then it would become much harder to classify “right” from “left.” “Good” from “evil.” “Us from them.”

This brings us back to our definition. Just as a Coulter rips through the soil and divides it, so does Ann Coulter cut through the fertile ground our democracy was planted in and chops up any remnants of the last harvest. With the soil divided, the farmers may come to check on their crop and find that the virility of amber waves of grain has given way to a field of weeds.

Popularity: 79% [?]

All Presidential elections, both past and present, have always had candidates from both parties with major controversies in their history. This election is no different. The current leading Democratic candidates are Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama. It’s no surprise to anyone that both of these candidates have had many controversies in their history.

First, is Senator Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton has had many major controversies in the past; perhaps the best known was actually caused by her husband, President Bill Clinton. When Bill Clinton was in office it was speculated that he was having an affair with a White House intern Monica Lewinsky. This was later confirmed when Bill issued a public apology. Another large controversy plaguing Hillary’s past is the Whitewater Controversy. Whitewater was basically a scandal involving the real estate purchases of the Clinton couple. Eventually Hillary was subpoenaed before a Federal Grand Jury where she claimed she couldn’t find the records of the dealings; the records were found two years later in the first lady’s room. As with all candidates, there are more less important controversies that have occurred, but these two are the most famous and will have more of an effect on Hillary’s campaign – not to mention the Hillary Health Care plan.

Of course, Senator Barack Obama is not exempt from such controversies as these. Many of the controversies in Obama’s past as less known than those of Clinton, but he definitely doesn’t sport a perfect past. Perhaps the most widely known of his controversies is the Obama-Warren Controversy. The Obama-Warren Controversy stems from Obama giving a speech at the Saddleback Church in California. Obama was invited to speak his opinion on AIDS but it soon escalated into Obama giving his opinion on abortion and other political issues. This angered the churchgoers as well as Pastor Rick Warren. This is perhaps the largest true controversy that has ever occurred in Obama’s history.

These are just a few examples of controversy caused by current candidates. There are many more controversial topics and issues which these candidates will be forced to face in the upcoming election. To fully understand all these controversies, it is important that the voters inform themselves. Just because a candidate or controversy is not mentioned does not mean it is unimportant, each person must make the decision of what is important and what is not.

Hopefully these examples will help to encourage the education of the common voter.

Popularity: 28% [?]

In the last Presidential election, apathy was the order of the day. Many people saw their vote as almost meaningless. They refused to go to the poles. Excuses ranged from having no time to claiming the state they lived in always went to the other side in Presidential races. This apathy has led to another term of disappearing rights, needless war, international discord, and government-condoned torture.

You would think these regressions would light a fire underneath the hearts of Patriots. Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be the case.

In a local pub the other day I overheard a conversation. Several servers were gathered at the bar watching election coverage on one of the major networks. When the topic turned to the great Hillary vs. Obama debate, one of the servers quickly chimed in and said that it didn’t matter which of them were elected because somebody would assassinate them before the first hundred days of their term was over. The other servers quickly agreed and the conversation turned course

This alone would suggest that the general population is as apathetic as they were in 2004. Couple it with the fact that the person who said it was a young black woman and one could infer that we have slipped even further into apathy. It’s not surprising considering we’re told on a daily basis by our leaders that the only thing we have to fear is a nut-job with a homemade bomb.

It is understandable that in a population of over 300 million people that the average person would consider the vote they cast as immaterial. No matter how close previous presidential elections were one vote wouldn’t have tipped them one way or another. The inherent flaw in this argument comes down to a matter of leadership.

The media controls the state of political discourse in this country. Sure, with Youtube debates and town meetings we’re given the impression of being involved in the process, but what good does an open forum do when the people allowed to speak are filtered by the people holding the event? What honesty can come from an event organized by a news media that rarely, if ever, challenges the status quo?

And we let them lead the conversation. In just the past few weeks the media have taken it upon themselves to choose the Democratic candidates? By labeling other candidates elves and madmen (Kucinich and Gravel, respectfully) they have discredited them. Now, long before primary season begins we are told the only real choices areClintonor Obama, and woe to anybody in the media who says anything different…

So who should be leading the conversation? Average citizens not unlike our apathetic servers at the local pub. Unfortunately that apathy tricks us into thinking that we have no effect on our country’s destiny. We watch the news and stand behind one of two pre-fabricated popular opinions and pretend we stand informed. We don’t ask questions. That’s what we have reporters for.

If there was ever a time the citizenry needed to take the reigns of the conversation it is now. In the last election the winner came down to a few counties inOhio. It was a tight margin. Imagine if everybody who didn’t vote because it “didn’t matter” had voted. It might have made a slight difference. Imagine if every one of those people had debated with close and trusted friends causing them to go out and vote. That would’ve made a noticeable dent. Now imagine if ever one of those voters and taken that passion and started the conversation around their town. Organized town meetings, spurred debates at the lunch counter and around the water cooler. The results of the last presidential election might have completely reversed.

In order to take hold of this conversation politics needs to become a topic that isn’t taboo in polite conversation. Two people may hold different opinions of the minutia of “Lost,” but rarely has a friendship been ruined due to a debate over the real meaning of those numbers. People should not attach their egos to their political opinions. This keeps them from having a real discourse because neither party can be convinced of the other’s point. The state of the conversation of this country does not allow for learning. Instead, it only allows dogmatism and ignorance.

Leadership. It is something, we’re told on a daily basis, is better left to the elected officials, the news media, and other people “way smarter than us.” It is a right generations of Americans fought for we’ve forsaken in lieu of a temporary safety. We can win it back. It takes one young server to disagree. Then that server may convince a few others who will convince their husbands who will convince their co-workers who will convince their parents and grandparents. Pretty soon our chosen leaders won’t be able to stem the roar of the conversation in cities around our country.

And it will begin with the power of one.

Article by William Meeks

Popularity: 33% [?]

Popularity: 24% [?]

Popularity: 17% [?]

A familiar face from the hit TV series Law and Order will be popping up on your screen soon, in the form of a 2008 Republican Candidate for the Presidential Election. Fred Thompson, a lawyer, famous actor, and former Tennessee U.S. Senator announced on September 5, 2007 that he was indeed running for presidency, rumors of which had been circulating for months beforehand. Since his official announcement to run, Fred Thompson has been experiencing great leaps in the polls, especially unusual for a candidate entering the race so late. Fred Thompson has started to slowly eclipse John McCain and Mitt Romney, two other Republican candidates, and is now closing in on Rudy Giuliani, The highest Republican in recent polls.

Fred Thompson has let his stance on various positions be known, both recently and from his term as a U.S. Senator. Fred Thompson can be categorized as pro-economy, stating the he believes in free-trade and low taxes. Fred Thompson has also stated that he is Pro-Life, but he also believes that women should not be criminalized for early term abortions. Fred Thompson has also addressed his beliefs towards the conflict in Iraq and controversially said he does not support a withdrawal.

Fred Thompson is widely supported throughout the United States, and is known as a very down to earth man. While a U.S. Senator of Tennessee, Fred Thompson did not buy a home in D.C. and instead bought a couch to sleep on. When asked why, Thompson stated that he did not want to send any more bills home to Tennessee. Although the Republican Primary candidate is still up in the air, Fred Thompson is definitely a top contender.

Popularity: 16% [?]

With new candidates coming out of the woodwork seemingly almost daily, the 2008 presidential election is forecasted to be a heavily contested one. The two primary parties, Democrats and Republicans, both find themselves in an internal struggle to produce a worthy candidate. The most recognizable name in the pool of candidates for the Democrats would have to be Hillary Clinton, wife of the former president Bill Clinton. Hillary Clinton is a current Senate member representing the state of New York, where she has been elected by a wide margin in the past two elections.

A whirlwind of controversy surrounds Hillary Clinton in her run for presidency as she would be the first female to be elected president. There has been some recent criticism towards Hillary Clinton for her see-saw political agenda, the primary example being her stance on War in Iraq.

Hillary Clinton set the stage to enter a political career during the presidency of her husband, Bill Clinton. Hillary broke away from the normal tasks of the First Lady and took a prominent position in political matters. The Clinton Health Care Plan was a bill that Hillary took great pride in, although it failed due to lack of approval by Congress. Although her primary bill never passed, Hillary produced various laws that are now in effect.

Hillary Clinton held a comfortable lead in the first half of 2007, with her two major competitors, Barack Obama and John Edwards, lagging behind in the polls. Hillary Clinton also had a substantial lead in fundraising, although one of her major contributors came back to haunt her. Norman HSU, who had raised a great deal of money for Clinton’s presidential race, was found to be a fugitive in an old investment fraud case. Hillary managed to maintain a lead in the polls even through this controversy and still maintained a lead in fundraising. At the most recent Democratic debate in October, Hillary gave a lackluster performance and was hammered by the other Democratic candidates. This poor performance at a crucial debate may set Hillary back in future polls.

May God helps us all…

Popularity: 20% [?]