ACORN and Voter Suppression

ACORN is a community activist group that operates nationwide and has recently been accused of massive voter fraud by the McCain campaign. According to factcheck, Obama has “long and deep” ties to the group. In the past few weeks, the McCain campaign has accused the group of perpetrating voter fraud by intentionally submitting invalid registration forms. It wouldn't matter anyway, ACORN is not aloud to throw out registration forms even if they are suspected to be fraud. If there is suspicions that a form is fake then, according to factcheck, ACORN says that it first flags all suspicious registrations. Investigator Hayes followed up, confirmed that many registrations were faked, and found a former ACORN worker who confessed to faking most of her forms. ACORN is not just sittng by and letting their employees get away with this, a total of 33 employees have been fired for "suspicious" voter registration activities. Also according to factcheck, ACORN says that such raids are part of "a systematic partisan agenda of voter suppression,"

Even though any attempt of fraud will have no affect of the presidential race the Obama campaign effectively pushing back against any GOP-inspired shenanigans. It is also said in Stop GOP Vote Suppression in a recent report in the New York Times found that in some battleground states, for every new voter registered two other voters have been removed. That is just one example of voter suppression, in UPDATED: Voter Suppression Growing Nationwide there is a portion of the article that talks about an incident where a college student was looking foward to voting in her first presidential election. Just two weeks before the article was written she got a letter from local election officials, it stated: "This office has received notification from the state of Georgia indicating that you are not a citizen of the United States and therefore, not eligible to vote." She was one of more than 50,000 registered Georgia voters who have been "flagged" because of a computer mismatch in their personal identification information.

Voter suppression is becoming a serious problem and is a major scandal in my opinion. While on the other hand ACORN is not a very big scandal and can be taken care of easily. For example Freddie Johnson has registered to vote 42 times in Cuyahoga County since the first of the year. Most, if not all, of his sign-ups were solicited by canvassers for ACORN, but this cannot be controlled by ACORN, they have to turn in all registrtion forms by law, and ACORN is firing suspicous employees.

Humanities This Year

I believe the most important "thing" I have learned this year would have to be how the colonies seperated from Great Britain and how John Adams contributed to the seperation.I never really learned about how the colonies seperated from Great Britain. The trial that took place after the soldiers shot into the mob it set a foundation for he seperation and John Adams led the trial. The socratic seminar also really helped me understand the importance of the case and why John Adams thought it was his best work.

The work I am most proud of this year would have to be the Newspaper project. I never learned about the Lincoln-Douglas debates to this extent and writing the article about the Alton debate really helped me with writing overall. This project was a difficult project t get done, but my group worked hard and we finished on time. I also think made a large contribution to the finished product, such as how the layout looked and I also helped fill in blank space on the Newspaper. For example I said we should have four columns and I made an extra article about a gun that was coming out at the time of he debates.

If we had more time to work on the Newspaper I think they would have come out alot better. We had some typo's and allignment issues that we could have revised. In the future I will reread the whole article and edit mistakes/typo's. There was also no one in the group familiar with the program we were using so we had to get tech support alot of the time. During this project I learned alot about ledes, the teacher gave us specific directioins on how a lede shoud look and what it should include. The teacher also showedt us captions, pull quotes, by lines etc.. and other things we might find on a Newspaper that we should include in our project.

08 Presidential Debates Review

I read an article that graded each Obama and McCain on their performance in the first debate. It saidthat Obama won in every aspect. I agreed with the article and also came to a conclusion that Obgama won, after watching the debate online. In this debate Obama and McCain get their first chance to speak directly to the public and tell some of their policies.

Both Palin and Biden made mistakes in the Vice Presidential Debate, in class we discussed that Palin, not surprisingly, beat around the bush and never directly answered a question. Biden also made his share of mistakes, but in my opinion won without ease. In the vice Presidential Debate each nominee gets a chance to give support to their partner and also give some of their own polocies.

In the second Presidential Debate McCain took an approach to attack Obama and point out things Obama either did wrong or mistakes he has made in the past. Obama took it well, and ended up winning the debate constantly correcting McCain and overall doing a good job. In this debate they both had another chance to speak directly to the public, maybe correct some mistakes they may have made in the last debate, and tell some more of their policies.

This was one of my favorite debates because of how McCain got emotional near the end of the debate, it might of been a move of desperation, but in my opinion it wasn't very professional and I don't know what he expected to get out of it. Obama clearly won in my eyes, he stayed professional the whole debate. This was their last chance to talk directly to the public and give their opinions on some major topics.

Presidential Debates

The Presidential Debates have changed alot since they first started. They still mainly have the same purpose. The purpose of the debates is for the candidates to express their opinions on different issues.

In 1858 having a black person as president was unthinkable, but now it is a very good possibility that we will have our first black president. In 1858 women weren't even aloud to vote, now we could very well have a women as Vice President.

Has the Internet Changed How People Approach Democracy?

How has the Internet affected the way that Americans approach democracy? How does the Internet and it's effects fit into the historical context of technology and democracy in America?

In my opinion it has, but it depends on how you define approach. The Internet keeps people more informed while in the 1800's you would have to go to the debates or buy a newspaper. It also keeps people less involved and makes it less personal, people can get an opinion online without knowing the person.

In class we talked about how sometimes the Internet isn't very private, for example if you have a conversation on myspace anyone can view it. So some people might think democracy doesn't protect everyones privacy.

In 200 years from now the internet would have just be a stepping stone to some other technology and they might feal the same way about it as we do the internet. If as time progresses and technology advances people view democracy different it should be changed somewhat according the present needs.

Sources Cited:
nytimes.com

Newspaper Reflection

My group wrote our articles about the final Lincoln-Douglas debate, The Alton debate. It mostly covered topics of their previous debates so we could search for their opinions on a topic from more than one debate if we had to. Some of the topics were hard to find pictures for, such as The Dred Scott case, the only ones I could find were current books or a front of a movie.

All of my group members got their articles done on time so I wasn't worried about missing the deadline. The only problem was none of the group members had any experience in the program we were using for the layout and design. I was worried that we would have a lot problems, but thanks to some of the other classmates for helping we didn't have to worry about not knowing how to do something on the program. Although I am not completely satisfied with how the newspaper turned out I am happy with how I contributed to the final product.

We had extra space on the layout once we had posted the images and articles so I researched some other things that were going on in 1858. I wanted to find the weather or find if there were any criminals wanted at the time, but what I found was the Tom Ball. It was a gun that was coming out and I wrote about the guns features and how it looked.

For future projects similar to this I would like to contribute more to the layout and design than I did in this project. One thing learned while making my article that the more critiques you get from different people the more perspectives you will get and maybe someone will notice a mistake no one else saw. I also learned that having an action verb in your headlines is very helpful, it catches peoples attention and having a short and to the point lede help keep the readers attention.

Some of the group members had a hard time getting along, there were also some that weren't staying on track some of the time. I did everything I could to help and am glad of my contributions I made to the final product and in the end I liked the experience and how the newspapers came out.

Finding My Inner Photographer

Taking this photo I first tried to get one of her eyes at point of interest and shot at eye level so it would be a unique point of view and so her eyes would stand out. The picture was taken extra close so she would take up most of the frame.

In this image I tried to get one point of interest on Ben's face and one on the flowers. I wanted the background to stand out so I tried to use depth of field and have the background stand out.

Lincoln-Douglas and Recent Debates

1.The Lincoln-Douglas debates took place in 1858 in 7 public debates and the key issue of the debates was whether or not slavery would be allowed in new territories of the United States. I thought the Alton debate was very interesting because of what Douglas said, "The federal government should not establish laws establishing slavery because each state deserved to do so itself."

Lincoln had a completely different view. If we would let the states choose for themselves slavery would continue. Lincoln apposed slavery, he supported federalism and wanted it to be up to the government.

In 1854 Lincoln was upset by the anti-slavery agitation which was created by the Actís repeal of the Missouri Compromise shortly after the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by congress. He did everything he could to support Anti-Kansas-Nebraska candidates when they were up for election.

2. In class we discussed the recent presidential debates and some some of the candidates policies. What I found interesting is that McCain switched his motto to change from experience while Obama's same motto was change.This put McCain ahead of Obama in terms of number of votes. Even though McCain said he wanted change he did not change any of his policies. So it made me wonder if people were leaning toward McCain because of his skin color. I think changing his motto was just a move of desperation, he changed what he believed in just for a few more votes. Other blogs such as Demographics and Politics and Lincoln vs Douglas & Obama vs. McCain have some of the same views as mine.


Sources Cited:
Finch, Edward. The Lincoln-Douglas Debates. Freeport, Illinois: Lincoln-Douglas Society: 2000. Available from: http://www.Lincoln-Douglas.org ; accessed [8-9-08]

GIS

A GIS, also known as a geographical information system, is an information system for capturing, storing, analyzing, managing and presenting data. GIS allows people to make user created searches and allows people to analyze data/information. The GIS can be used by many different people, for example it can be to find wetlands that need protection from pollution, or can be used by a company to site a new business location to take advantage of a previously under-served market. Overall it helps you answer questions and solve problems by looking at your data in a way that is quickly understood and easily shared. GIS technology can be integrated into any enterprise information system framework.

In and article called Technology REveals New Worlds to Map, Michelle Boivin uses the system for many things such as working with the military to gather and assess data to help manage military facilities on the West Coast.

Sources Cited:
gis.com
wikipedia
nytimes.com

Racism and Segregation In America

Racism and segregation were a big problem after slavery ended. Schools regected black kids and white people also got priority over a black people when it came to hiring someone for a job.

In class we talked about Linda Brown and she had to walk miles to get to school because her local school wouldn't allow her to attend the school. According to Stephanie Luna in her blog "We Live In a Racist America" forcing the black and white kids to attend different schools made them unequal.

Statistics show that schools are becoming less integrated."thin-school segregation was much less important in the elementary grades than in 7th and 10th grades and that segregation of both types tended to be greatest in districts with nonwhite shares between 50 and 70 percent", according to Segregation and Resegregation in North Carolina's Public School Classrooms, an article provided by ERIC Education Resource Information Center).