Elections Test

What I think it takes to win a political election in the United States today is to have a big background in politics and to do a lot of fundraising for a cause that seems to be important for the country, state, and/or county you are running in. For example people like in the movie we watched in class where Jeff Smith had absolutely no political background where the man he was running against had his mother, father, and grandfather all served time in office. That is a big deal because when you have a candidate who is just coming out of nowhere and wants to run, as a voter you tend to think that he does not know what he is talking about or even doing. On the contrary, when someone has a huge political background, the voter looks at him or her as a very strong candidate just because his family is in politics. Now with that said, the media really seems to stem off of if the candidate has any political history in his or her life. The media tends to be biased towards the candidate who has the history, other than the candidate that does not. That does not mean that the media is always right, but the media is there for a reason and that is to get voters to make up their minds about a specific candidate, and to dislike the other one they do not like.
Another way elections work today is basically money. At the beginning of the Jeff Smith’s campaign he did not have a lot of money, so he was not able to get his name out there as much as the other candidates. But with the help from fundraising, he was able to get more supplies, better offices, and more people to work for him so that his name was out there for voters to know. To make that money he had to get his money from the Political Action Committee (PAC). The PAC is any corporation, labor union, trade association, or other organization that contribute at least 5,000 dollars to the candidate they choose. And to get the PACs as a candidate you need to be able to persuade their organization that they are the right candidate for them to sponsor. The more PACs you have, the better your campaign can run, and the more voters you are likely to have. Even though the PACs contribute money only once, soft money, another way to get money is from a steady donation from a government or organization, hard money. By getting money from an ongoing government daycare subsides is one example of hard money. To get the hard money is the same concept of getting soft money, but you have to pay more attention to the hard money because they are constantly giving you money, unlike the PACs where they give money once and that is it. But with their support of many organizations they are able to get lot voters to vote for you. As a candidate you want to have a lot of people to vote for you because now a days the voter turnout is significantly low. With the amount of people going to vote being low, you want to be certain that you have everyone’s vote. With the turnout of voters being so low America is going to start to suffer because the candidates try to get out to as many people as possible, so they spend a lot of money on things to get their name out, which makes our economy worse because no is paying attention. As Americans we need to vote no matter what side of the spectrum you are on you need to vote.
The way elections are today, is very democratic because a democracy is the voting of the people by the people. And every candidate is trying to get the people’s vote so they can be office.