Once the presidential candidates are finally chosen, we’re all bracing ourselves for the negative TV advertising that we hate so much. Why do political parties place these ads? The reason is simple: they work.
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As the 2008 Presidential election campaign moves into full throttle, people are again concerned about voting machines. How much can we trust our government? It turns out this isn’t the first time this has happened. Historian Bryan Pfaffenberger reminds us that “There’s an almost exact parallel between the debate we’re having today concerning electronic voting machines and the equally divisive, but completely forgotten, debate that greeted first-generation voting machine technology in the 1920s.”
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We’re already starting to hear about possible candidates for the 2008 presidential election, even though voting is more than a year away. In the last elections, people worried that their votes weren’t counted. Will this cause people not to bother to vote?maybe not even to register?
Campaigns historically have focused on turning out registered voters, but with the closeness of recent national elections the major parties are focusing more on voter registration. A new study of voter participation in presidential elections reveals that “later is better” when it comes to voter registration. People who register to vote closer to registration deadlines are much more likely to vote on Election Day than are people who register earlier in an election year.
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In these months before the Presidential election, when would-be Democratic candidates are campaigning furiously, it’s interesting to note that few of them seem to be appealing to the U.S. Muslim vote. This is because, despite Republican-led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, most U.S. Muslims vote Republican. According to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), 78% of Muslims voted Republican in 2000, probably because they have conservative social values.
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