BELOW IS THE TOPICS YOU HAVE TO CHOOSE FROM AND HAVE TO BE TWO. Only write 650 words, 10% less or 10% more. no more than that.

https://pressbooks.online.ucf.edu/pos2041bw/ This the link from the textbook. You can search the title of the topic you choose and the textbook is brief and simple. better to use information from there more than other sites.

He’s not too picky as long as it’s brief. 650 words.

Below is the topics and extra stuff if needed.

In this module, we will build on what we have already learned about political parties, constitutional rights, and interest groups to examine political campaigns and elections. For presidential elections, United States is one of only eleven countries in the world that still uses an Electoral College. Even in the US there have been many attempts to reform or abolish the Electoral College (Links to an external site.) initiated by Republicans and Democrats. Even presidents, who are elected by the Electoral College, have been known to criticize this institution as undemocratic; President Trump, for example, made public his dislike of the Electoral College in a 2012 tweet stating, “the electoral college is a disaster for democracy.” (Links to an external site.) In more recent years, there has been increasing criticism of the continued use of the Electoral College (Links to an external site.) because in two recent elections the Electoral College and the popular vote were different, meaning that the candidate who won the majority of the popular vote did NOT gain the majority vote of the Electoral College; consequently, the candidate who became president had less voter support than the candidate who did not emerge victorious.

The Electoral College is not the only aspect of US elections that has been criticised as undemocratic. As many of you noted in the Civil Rights essays, voter suppression has “haunted America since it was founded.” (Links to an external site.) Even today, many American citizens do not have the right to vote. Similarly, there is a long history of gerrymandering by states (Links to an external site.) that load elections in favor of one party over another. While many gerrymandered congressional districts have been ruled unconstitutional by Federal courts, (Links to an external site.)the practice continues. Another major concern is the growing power and impact of money on electoral outcomes and government policies.

These limitations on the one-person-one-vote rule in the US have started to negatively affect how well US democracy is evaluated by scholars of US politics (Links to an external site.) and how the United States ranks compared to other democratic countries. US democracy has recently been downgraded by some democracy indexes including the indexes of Freedom House (Links to an external site.) and the conservative Economist (Links to an external site.). If you are interested in how political scientists and democracy analysts measure democracy, check this easy to understand Money Cage article from 2015 (Links to an external site.).

To pass this module, you will need to complete the following:

Part I: Readings/Video

Chapter 7: Voting and Elections

https://youtu.be/WafQKj9F-po (Links to an external site.)

Professor Patterson (Harvard)

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Part II: Essay

Essay Prompt:

One of the most famous scholars of democracy, Robert Dahl (Links to an external site.), notes that “A key characteristic of a democracy is the continuing responsiveness of the government to the preferences of its citizens, considered as political equals” (Dahl 1971 (Links to an external site.)).

Using Dahl’s definition of democracy, it is possible to see some general areas where our elections and electoral processes do not live up to the highest standards. From the textbook readings, module instructions, videos, and any other reliable sources you might find, address how and in what way any two of the following factors have nudged the US democracy away from Dahl’s description of democracy:

• The Electoral College
• Gerrymandering
• Voter suppression (overt and/or covert)
• Money

(First you should read the module instructions, the relevant chapter in the textbook, the links and videos, and find other sources for the two topics you select.)

Your 650-word (within +/- 10% of the word length) essay should use the following structure:

State which two topics you will discuss, and briefly explain why they are relevant to the conduct of fair elections at the federal level in the US. You should then use concrete examples and evidence to demonstrate your understanding of the topics you have picked, the examples used, the quality of your evidence, and how persuasive your argument is. You should conclude with a summary evaluation of the impact of the topic you selected on equal representation of citizens and the implication for democracy.

The information below are brief introductions to each of the topics, they should be used as a starting point for your invesitgation.

Bonus questions (one point each): Answer must appear at the top of your essay under the word count:

1) how many times has the Electoral College selected a president who did not win the popular vote?

2) The US Constitution grants control of elections to which government?

Before you start…

You might want to refresh your understanding of how the right to vote was expanded across US history from a very limited franchise to universal adult suffrage. The following, well-researched, compelling Business Insider story (Links to an external site.) is a solid illustration of the expansion of the right to vote in the USA.

Topics:

1) Electoral College

The Electoral College has become an increasingly hot political topic due to the closeness of recent presidential elections, including the 2000 and 2016 presidential elections when the Electoral College vote and the popular vote were significantly different.

How the Electoral College works / three-part video slideshow

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• If you are interested in seeing how it actually takes voter preferences to select the next president, you can play around with use this helpful, interesting electoral college simmulation (Links to an external site.) created by the UK newspaper, The Guardian, to try out different possible outcomes that will allow your preferred candidate to win the current presidential election.

2) Gerrymandering:

This has been and still is practiced across the US and recently became a major political and legal issue here in the state of Florida.

• To read a bit about how Florida has dealt with this issue, read Robert Barnes’ Washington Post publication (Links to an external site.). Or how a computer program tackled the gerrymandering problem (Links to an external site.).

Gerrymandering

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3) Money in Campaigns:

There is a considerable body of literature that links money to campaigns, political power, and policy outcomes (click here for a journalistic view) (Links to an external site.)

Politicians also understand this relationship, which is why numerous laws have been passed in an attempt to reduce the power of money in US politics, including the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 and the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. Legal restrictions on “buying” political influence, though, have been challenged in court (e.g. US Supreme Court’s Buckley v. Valeo (1976) case (Links to an external site.)) or circumvented by interest groups finding and using loopholes in the laws.

In January 2010, the US Supreme Court again addressed this issue, but this time it ruled that corporations could spend as much money as they wished to attempt to sway voters in federal elections. This 5 to 4 decision, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (Links to an external site.), overturned a century-old restriction on corporate funding of elections. (The Court’s majority argued that US corporations should enjoy the same free speech rights as individuals; thus, the government could not restrict how much money these corporations give to election campaigns.)

You can read Nick Wing’s Huffington Post report (Links to an external site.) on John McCain’s view of this ruling and its impact on US politics. The 2012 election was the first presidential election to be held since this ruling, the current election is the third since the ruling and the most expensive, yet (Links to an external site.).

4) Voter Suppression:

As noted in the introduction to this module, there is a long history of voter suppression that continues to the modern day. It has been roundly condemned, but has also been widely practiced. You could start your investigation with the Brennan Center’s report (Links to an external site.). But there are similar reports from different political leanings including a recent story in the Financial Times (Links to an external site.), a conservative UK newspaper. PBS had a helpful primer on this in 2018 (Links to an external site.).In this module, we will build on what we have already learned about political parties, constitutional rights, and interest groups to examine political campaigns and elections. For presidential elections, United States is one of only eleven countries in the world that still uses an Electoral College. Even in the US there have been many attempts to reform or abolish the Electoral College (Links to an external site.) initiated by Republicans and Democrats. Even presidents, who are elected by the Electoral College, have been known to criticize this institution as undemocratic; President Trump, for example, made public his dislike of the Electoral College in a 2012 tweet stating, “the electoral college is a disaster for democracy.” (Links to an external site.) In more recent years, there has been increasing criticism of the continued use of the Electoral College (Links to an external site.) because in two recent elections the Electoral College and the popular vote were different, meaning that the candidate who won the majority of the popular vote did NOT gain the majority vote of the Electoral College; consequently, the candidate who became president had less voter support than the candidate who did not emerge victorious.

The Electoral College is not the only aspect of US elections that has been criticised as undemocratic. As many of you noted in the Civil Rights essays, voter suppression has “haunted America since it was founded.” (Links to an external site.) Even today, many American citizens do not have the right to vote. Similarly, there is a long history of gerrymandering by states (Links to an external site.) that load elections in favor of one party over another. While many gerrymandered congressional districts have been ruled unconstitutional by Federal courts, (Links to an external site.)the practice continues. Another major concern is the growing power and impact of money on electoral outcomes and government policies.

These limitations on the one-person-one-vote rule in the US have started to negatively affect how well US democracy is evaluated by scholars of US politics (Links to an external site.) and how the United States ranks compared to other democratic countries. US democracy has recently been downgraded by some democracy indexes including the indexes of Freedom House (Links to an external site.) and the conservative Economist (Links to an external site.). If you are interested in how political scientists and democracy analysts measure democracy, check this easy to understand Money Cage article from 2015 (Links to an external site.).