Getting Elected

What does it take to get elected in today's political environment? While watching the movie about Mr. Smith, I learned a lot about what it truly takes to get elected. Not only must a person be popular with the community, but they must represent the values of the people, and be prepared to make changes which the people want, but they must be able to show the people they can and are willing to do this. How can they do that? A big part of become elected is becoming popular with the people, becoming a familiar name, and the best way to do this is by campaigning. Mr. Smith’s approach to campaigning was to call all potential voters, make yard signs, knock on doors and talk to the voters, make movies and commercials. All of these are popular forms of campaigning, but they all cost money. Any campaign, be it at the local level or the national level, costs money, and it is up to the candidates to raises funds to pay for these expenses. A way that used to be popular was by getting soft money, which was when money would not be directly given to candidate. Receiving soft money is illegal now, and candidates must now receive hard money, which is money directly donated to the candidate so they can use it in the way they see best fit. PACs is the name of an organization which provides hard money for a candidate. This is essential in a campaign for receiving a constant flow of money. Campaigning is a major part of becoming elected, and money is a major part of campaigning, so getting money is a huge part of becoming elected.
Media bias is also used by certain news channels and other candidates. They will pick certain information about a candidate, it can be positive or negative, and they will present it in a way that causes them to be seen in a strictly positive or negative manner. They might want to support Mr. Smith, so they would find things about him that are positive, and only say the positive facts about it, and leave out negative things. A person running against Mr. Smith would choose information that is stating bad things about him, to make him look worse than them. Media bias is often used during campaigning because candidates will always want themselves to look better than the others.
Another factor in becoming elected is your political party. There are two main parties, the democrats and the republicans, both of which have separate beliefs. The Democratic Party is traditionally more liberal and the Republican Party is more conservative. Choosing which party you are a part of is mainly based on your political ideology, but often times, people will vote for someone just because they are members of the same party of them, and ignore the media, and campaigns. This is great for someone of that party, because they have to do almost no work for a vote, but for someone of the opposing party, they can do nothing to change the voters mind.
Voter turnout is the amount of people who go to vote on Election Day, and this is mainly based on how important the election is. More people will vote for the presidential election that the midterm primaries, because the election is more important, but what should turnout be. Is having a low turnout an okay thing? Well, in some situations, yes. While you are not hearing the voice of all the people, you might not want to. There are a lot of people in our country who don’t really care. It wouldn’t be fair if someone with no political knowledge went to go vote and picked someone based on their name, because it could skew the election. I feel like someone should only vote if they feel strong towards them. If less people are passionate about the election, then voter turnout should be low.

Civil Liberties Test

What happens when freedoms and protections collide? There are a few things which could happen. The cases which I am observing are "Bethel v. Fraiser", dealing with the 1st amendment, "Veronia School District 47 v. Acton" and "Mapp v. Ohio", which are both a conflict dealing with the 4th amendment, and "Goss v. Lopez” is dealing with the 14th amendment.

Firstly, "Bethel v. Fraiser", in which during a school assembly, a student, Fraiser, gave a speech which dealt with inappropriate sexual innuendos. The school decided that he should be suspended for two days. Fraiser claimed that it was his freedom of speech, the first amendment, while the school complained that it was their duty to protect the student body, primarily the freshman, from hearing these remarks. In the end, the school ended up winning the case, the court declaring it was constitutional for them to punish this individual for his actions. The "freedoms" of Fraiser collided with the "protection" of other students, and in this specific case, the protections of the students from the obscenities of his speech were more important.

Secondly, "Mapp v. Ohio", Mapp was convicted of possessing obscene materials, mostly pornography, after an illegal police search. Since the search warrant was specifically for drugs, when they found this illegal material, the police decided that they would charge her for this. Due to the 4th amendment, the evidence obtained against Mapp, which was obtained during the search warrant for something else, their use of this evidence against her was unconstitutional, and the charges were dropped. In this instance, Mapp's freedom to, "search and seizure" was protected even though her ownership of illegal drugs was harmful. It wasn't fair to be charged in that circumstance.

Next, "Goss v. Lopez", students at a high school were given 10 day suspensions by the principal and not given a chance to have a hearing until after their suspensions were given. The students claimed that due to the 14th amendment, they deserved a hearing, because of Due Process. The court rules, in a 5-4 decision, that the students were constitutionally protected and they did deserve a hearing before the suspensions were issued. The freedom of the student to have a hearing was constitutional, while "protecting" the students by removing these kids as soon as possible was infringing on their rights.

Lastly, "Veronia School District 47 v. Acton", which deals with high school student, Acton, who decided that he was not required to perform a drug test, and was ultimately suspended from playing football by the school. The question was whether or not it was constitutional for the school to do this, because of the 4th amendment clause, dealing with search and seizure. In the end, the school won because the concern over safety, or protection, of the athletes overrides the intrusion of student’s privacy.

In conclusion, these cases show that there is no fine line between protections and freedoms, and it always depends on the case.