Way People Vote example essay topic

465 words
There are many factors that affect the way people vote. The first thing that affects a voters views are their personal characteristics and the second is the voters affiliations. The voters income or amount of money earned per year; occupation, or job held effect their views. Education, grade school, high school, or college degree; a voters gender, male or female; their age, under 30, or between 30 and 49, or over 50; religious background, Catholic, or Jew, or Protestant; ethnic background or race, white or nonwhite; and geography, or region of residence, like North, South, East or West, are all a voters personal characteristics.

Your family, co-workers or friends, are the voters affiliations. People over 50 usually vote Republican, while nonwhites usually vote Democratic. This does not hold true for all people over 50 and nonwhites because someone could be over 50 and nonwhite. All of these factors contribute to a person's political affiliation, but no one factor decides exactly how someone will vote. Psychological factors have to do with peoples individual behavior.

Party identification, candidates, or issues of the candidates are all psychological factors. All of these can effect how someone might vote. Our nations voter problem could be due to several things. The first is the fact that we have a two party system, and we will most likely always have a two-party system. Some people say they cannot change the outcome of an election by just one vote.

Some people are just lazy, and when they see that the polls have closed on the East coast and the person they want to win is ahead by 10%, they think there is no need to go out and vote. Currently the United States has a large problem with voter turnout and some steps need to be taken to get more people to vote. People need to be more involved and better informed. People need to understand as citizens it is their obligation to vote. People need to read the paper and watch the news so they can be more aware of the candidates and the issue of each election. Finally, American citizens need to find out when and where they should go to vote and take the time to do so.

One idea to encourage voting is to set up programs in schools that would inform young people, who are soon to be voters, on issues, candidates, and political policies. Finally, programs could be set up to make the act of voting easier. For example, mail in ballots, or having the polls open long for longer periods of time covering several days giving people more opportunities to find time to vote.

Bibliography

Howard Ball, Dale K rane and Thomas P. Laugh, Compromised Compliance: Implementation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (1982).
Jack Bloom, Class, Race, and the Civil Rights Movement (1987).
David Chappell, Inside Agitators: White Southerners in the Civil Rights Movement (Baltimore, 1994).
David R. Colburn, Racial Change and Community Crisis: St. Augustine, Florida, 1877-1980 (1985).
Vickie L. Crawford, et al, eds., Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearers (Brooklyn, 1990).
Glen T. E skew, But for Birmingham: The Local and National Movements in the Civil Rights Struggle (1997).
Adam Fairclough, Race & Democracy: The Civil Rights Movement in Louisiana, 1915-1972 (Athens, 1995).
Adam Fairclough, To Redeem the Soul of America: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King, Jr. (Athens, 1987).
James F. Findlay, Jr. Church People in the Struggle: The National Council of Churches and the Black Freedom Movement, 1950-1970 (1993).
Ron Formisano, Boston Against Busing: Race, Class and Ethnicity in the 1960's and 1970's (1991) John M.
Glen, Highlander: No Ordinary School, 1932-1962 (Lexington, 1988).
Hugh Davis Graham, The Civil Rights Era: Origins and Development of National Policy (1990).
Henry Hampton and Steve Fayer, Voices of Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement from the 1950's through the 1980's (New York, 1990).
Richard H. King, Civil Rights and the Idea of Freedom (1992).
Steven F. Lawson, Running for Freedom: Civil Rights and Black Politics Since 1941 (New York, 1991).
Steven F. Lawson and Charles Payne, Debating the Civil Rights Movement, 1945-1968 (1998).
Mark Stern, Calculating Visions: Kennedy, Johnson and Civil Rights (1992).
Andrew Young, An Easy Burden: The Civil Rights Movement and the Transformation of America (New York, 1996).