Electoral College

With a new system the Electoral College could cut out the "faulty" wins, allow for a more exciting campaign race, and allow for a smaller party to greater effect on the election.

The current system of the Electoral College is effective but not to the highest level of effectiveness that is possible. The system could be changed so that Elector votes would be proportional to the public votes. With this system the Electoral College could cut out "faulty" wins, allows for a more exciting and fair campaign race, and allow for smaller parties to make more of a dent.

 As an example, Wisconsin has 10 votes, say 70% of Wisconsin voters vote for Obama. With this, Wisconsin electors would vote 7 for Obama and 3 for Romney (If it was not even then the winning party rounds up). This would make it more accurate and cut out the chances of having Presidents who win the Electoral votes but not the popular votes. This has happened 3 times in the past and most recently in the 2000 election where Bush beat Gore not in popular vote but just Electoral College. This system would allow for a more fair way and not allow for these "faulty" wins.

There are states that always vote Republican or Democratic. Texas is nearly always Republican, so democrats know they will not win Texas and do not really fight for it. But, what if they could gain up to a third of Texas' votes and gain an extra 10 votes that they would not normally get. This would allow for a more exciting campaign race and allow for some states to get attention from the candidates that they normally never see. This would create a more exciting race from a political stand point and a public stand point and would in general get more people interested in the election.

Small parties make little to no difference in most recent elections. If the system was changed, it could promote these parties and potentially put one of these candidates into office. With Ralph Nader, the Green Party noise every single year and got some of their policies put into the Democratic or Republican plan, but since he is gone there has been nothing about the Green Party in any election news that I have seen. With the proportional system, they could turn out to be huge factors because they would certainly win some votes that they wouldn't have been won prior. A party as small as the Green Party is not likely to win the majority of the votes in a state but they can just make dents into the Republican or Democrat votes by winning a few votes in each state.

Improvements to the Presidential Election

The presidential election is currently in a good state. There are some areas that could use some improvements. One improvement that I would suggest is to have the process to get on the ballots be more similar or even be one nation-wide ballot that all 50 states would use instead of having to invest so much time and money into each and every state. This would make it easier, and cheaper, for all and could encourage more people to run for president. Secondly, I would hope for some improvements by adding a third party. This would create more options for the citizens to vote for. This would create more competition between the three parties and more competition normally creates better quality. This would then create better candidates for presidents and then help the United States even more. Finally, I would like to see a mandatory exit poll in place. This would allow for the candidates to see who favors them and who they need to attract the attention of. With this they could either change their policies to slightly attract the groups that they need to attract in order to get more views. This would also go along the lines of creating more competition and then still create better candidates. It would also be more interesting, from my point of view, to watch candidates sort of "duke it out" for certain demographics. With these changes, the presidential election would improve by the means of entertainment value, allowing more people to run, and creating better candidates.

Romney's Political Advisor

     As Romney's political advisor i would focus heavily on the 30-44 age range, and suburban living citizens. These are two categories that are always divided and could be huge categories to win for the Republicans. With those wins they could push themselves into the oval office. Focusing the majority of the campaign on these two groups would be wise. Offering events, such as parties or question and answer sessions, in order to persuade these voters and get them to vote Republican
     They would only have to focus a small amount of the campaign on whites, religious people (besides the jewish community), and the 60+ age group because those groups normally always heavily vote Republican so they are practically shoe ins as long as they see some advertising. Driving people from nursing homes or churches to the polling areas could help greatly secure these groups.
     It would be smart to put a little bit of campaigning into heavily Democratic groups to hopefully sway part of those groups back towards evenly split or even to the Republican side. First-Time voters, 18-29 age groups because those are mainly Democratic groups that could easily be partly persuaded. Going to colleges and talking to college students would really effect the votes and potentially persuade them.

     Following these plans, the Republicans and Romney could gain crucial voters and find his way into the oval office. This is a very reasonable plan and could very easily be accomplished with the funding given to the party. These gestures are simple but would go a long way in helping swing the votes to the Republican side.

Political Parties Graphic Analysis

Similarities Between Libertarians and the 2 Parties

Democrats:
           - Both the Libertarian Party and the Democrats support the right of Pro-Choice and have the right to abortion. Government should not intervene with someones rights to abort.

           -Both the Libertarian Party and the Democrats support the freedom of sexual preference. They believe that it is a choice and that government should not be able to interfere or give certain rights to married people compared to same-sex couples.


Republican:
           - Both, the Libertarians and the Republicans, support less gun restrictions and the right to have a weapon in order to defend yourself. They state that millions of gun owners have never used their gun in a harmful way and that ending gun ownership will not actually end gun ownership.

           - Both, the Libertarians and the Republicans, support tax cuts. The Libertarians even want to go as far as to remove the income tax and then rid of the IRS.

Presidential Powers

The powers of the President have strayed very far from the original Constitution but I believe that they would still be comfortable with their current state of power.

With President Nixon and the Watergate Scandal, I believe that he did have to give up the tapes although everything said in the oval office is supposed to be secret because of the severity of the scenario. He told CREEP to break into the Democratic Headquarters and spy on them which is completely unethical and probably illegal. He did not have the right to do this or keep the tapes.

Another example is when Eisenhower brought the Military in to help the Little Rock Nine. This was a good example of the Executive Power because if Eisenhower did not use this power then schools might have never been desegregated. This was a key moment in American history and is shown by how many books and movies have been made on the subject and how much importance is put on it during history classes and the Founding Fathers would have been proud.

Lastly, George W Bush used the executive powers when it came to the war in Afghanistan. He used his executive power to kidnap people, use warrant-less wire taps, and use questionable interrogation tactics. He did all this to "Keep America safe." This seems like it has gone a little far from what the Founding Fathers would've wanted, but it was all important in keeping our country safe and therefore is normally helpful and successful.

In short, the Executive Power is exactly where it needs to be right now, there is no need for an increase or decrease in Executive Power and it has no strayed too far from the original content of the Constitution.

Congress and the Budget Proccess

After playing the simulation game I learned how hard it truly is to reach all of the goals of the union and lower the national debt. Every choice that progressed us as a nation just seemed to make the country more and more in debt. A congress member must truly think through every decision to make sure that it will not make the nation too far in debt and will help the nation in the long run enough so that the cost is worth the product.

One example is when I tried to make us self dependent on oil instead of relying on other countries to help us. This process cost us a fortune but in the long run I believed that it would help us as a nation and help our citizens and hopefully lower the gas prices for all.

In another example was when I tried to up the National Security. Everything I did seemed to have a negative effect tagged along with it which would cost America as a country a ton of money. If I wanted to seal up some of the borders, then we would not be able to import as much and then would not be able to export as much as well which would greatly hurt America which survives on.

In the final example, I tried to make America "Go Green." This was just an all around awful decision due to the fact that it just made someone angry no matter what the decision was but the decisions I did make seemed to cost about 1/4th the amount of the other decisions. When attempting to go green i wanted to increase funding for wildlife foundations which only costed $5 billion but that was less that we could use for  business and development.

In short, you can never truly win because it is completely impossible to make everybody happy at one time AND by lessening the national debt because decisions cost money and change costs money.

The Perfect Amount of Rights

As Americans, we are told that we have freedoms. These include the freedom of assembly, the freedom of press, and  privacy from unreasonable search and seizure. Many Americans claim that they do not have enough rights, while others claim the opposite, but there is no reason to complain when they truly have the correct amount of rights.

One example of this, is the right to the freedom of assembly. Groups of all kinds are able to assemble in public and hold meetings. These include the Westboro Baptist Church and the KKK, both which are widely disliked. The first amendment gives these groups along with the well liked groups and all in between. Some might ask why are the bad groups allowed to conjure together and meet in public? These groups are allowed to meet as long as they do not practice or directly discuss violence in public. Groups are allowed to meet but are not allowed to be violent which is the perfect equilibrium for groups every where.

Another example of the perfect amount of rights is also within the 1st amendment, the freedom of press. People have the freedom of speech but can exercise it in writing form. There are restrictions to this though, such as libel or slander. This is shown through the Supreme Court case Kuhlmeier vs Hazelwood where 2 articles written by students for a school newspaper were denied access into the paper because of their content. The articles were written about touchy subjects and the school did not want that publicity. They had the right to do this because it was an accredited class. This further pushes the argument that you do have freedom of the press but there is restrictions that can be taken when writing for certain things. This is the perfect amount of rights for this right and should not be changed.

Finally, Americans are protected from unreasonable searches and seizures. But if there is reasonable suspicion then certain people, such as school officials can search a student when a police officer would need reasonable suspicion to be able to search that same student. If a school official was told that a student had something illegal then that student could be searched but a police officer could not search that student unless something is seen. This is shown in the case TLO vs New Jersey, where a 14 year old student was found smoking in the bathroom which created reasonable suspicion to search for cigarettes, when searching for cigarettes they found rolling papers, this created reasonable suspicion to search for marijuana. The student was found guilty correctly and the school demonstrated that people have their rights but only up to a certain point. Once you create reasonable suspicion you lose some rights which is completely reasonable and shows that Americans have the perfect amount of rights currently.

In short, Americans have the perfect amount of rights and most of the rights have been changed or justified so far as they see fit and so that America can be as good as possible