Voter registration or voter restriction?

Can your voice really be heard with all the obstacle in the registration progress?

 

Voter registration (or enrollment) is the requirement that a person otherwise eligible to vote register (or enroll) on an electoral roll before they will be entitled or permitted to vote. Such enrollment may be automatic or may require application being made by the eligible voter. Because the registration process actually set some limit to the citizens of United States of America, people started to question this process. “why you should have to register to vote. Can we make this easier?”

“why do we need those photo I.D. laws? Well, I was missing the point. The point was they wanted to restrict the right to vote,” said Rep. Keith Ellison. Voter ID laws in the United States requires a person to provide some form of official identification before they are permitted to register to vote. And some claim this to be obvious racist and intended to suppress minority voting. Basically using photo I.D. to determine weather if you can vote is nothing different than poll taxes, literacy tests fifty years ago. They are choosing those people they think to be able to vote, giving power to them only. the voting process suppose to emphasize the right of every single citizen in this country, giving them equal power to decide their own president. However, the photo I.D. law ripping the power of part of the voters away from them, restrict their right to vote, making this process unfair. Also not the photo I.D. law are restricting the voters, for those of who cannot read is also unable to vote simply because there is no way they can do the registration. Some might argue that those people aren’t suppose to vote because they can’t even read their vote would be irresponsible. However, although they are not able to read, but still they can hear the informations from the others and having discussion and great insight on the presidential election. shutting the down is also turning down a great proportion of voices in United States of America.

Normally, voter applications take 30 days to process once they have been received and approved. This is something that is clearly very complex and not convenience for the voters. Just like the college application needed three weeks to deliver your SAT and TOEFL scores, which does not even make sense, it truly limited some better test score to be able to be submitted. Some dates require to register for the voting in states, what if thirty days before the election day the person is still outstate doing work and other important things that not able to be back to register for it. It’s reducing some of the voice because of this inconvenience progress.

To sum up, the voter registration not only give us inconvenience on voting but restricting the power on part of the voters. I my opinion such bias process should be banished so we can have a better condition for voting.

Picture source:

http://news.hamlethub.com/swyonkers/politics/2159-st-day-for-votes-registration

http://officeofstrategicinfluence.com/issues.php?issue=voterids

https://tcf.org/content/commentary/voter-suppression-by-the-numbers/

 

Gun control? self control?

Insight on the gun control in America

Gun control has always been a critical argument in America, that it always has a deeply fraught relationship with violence. “Violence is out of control. Guns are a major cause.” With this long query in the existence of guns, the recent terrorism attack in Las Vegas that causes 58 people dead and 546 injured has intensify the issue with the gun control; some even argue that it’s time to repeal the second amendment. In my opinion Guns obviously have association with violence in United States of America, but the association between them does not implies the causation of death, therefore, banning guns won’t do any good to the situation we have now.

Handgun lying over a copy of the United States constitution and the American flag.

Firstly, Gun is way too widespread now in America, there are millions and millions of people that own a gun. Banning guns now will give a huge disadvantage to those people that do not have a gun yet. The action of banning guns won’t evaporate those that already exist, those criminal will still have the guns in their hands, and there will be no way those innocent people can protect themselves from the danger. Fear will spread all over America when people know they can’t protect themselves, and that’s defiantly going to cause critical problem to American society.

Are guns responsible for all the killing?

Also, Guns are never responsible for the killing, people do. They are never designed to represent violence, they are designed to maintain the peace. It is those violent people out there that are suppose to be controlled, even if they are restricted to use gun, there are still other ways they will do to express their anger to other people. Every criminal will choose the target that are weak. Banning the gun weaken those people which give the criminal a chance, instead of keeping the peace, this act will cause the true violence.

Last but not least, In my opinion guns have already became part of American culture. From the first settler to the wild west and now, Americans are bounded with guns. You will never see this wild and strong culture in China, this is something very unique for Americans. Like the food culture

One of Beijing local food even some Chinese can’t handle it’s flavor, made by beans that have gone mouldy.

 in China, some of them are very unhealthy, they might not even taste that good and we knew from the beginning, but we never banned them from our daily life, because that’s part of our culture. A country without it’s own culture is not a complete country. I think government should never take away something that is so meaningful to the history and culture of a country.

To sum up, the violence in America are clearly suppose to be controlled but not by restricting guns, this action will only unarmed those innocent people and leave them unprotected. Giving more violence education and giving more security regard to those public place will reduce the true problem that we are facing nowadays.

The Biased Internet

Born in a free country, everybody here in USA gets an equal opportunity as the person to your left or right, front or back, no matter the prejudices of caste, creed, class, color, sex, or race. But less and less people are using that to their advantages, mainly teenagers, and are losing interest in politics because the ideals of the political party don’t match up with their own individual ideals; they just blindly believing their parents on the issues and take a stance with them without giving a thought of their own. The Internet also plays a huge part in this since, when the teenagers do think and try to debate on the issues they feel aren’t right, most of their point and argument comes from nowhere else but online, a place where anybody could say anything and it could become the new trend of the year. A staggering 88% of American teenagers between the ages of 13 to 17 have an access to a mobile phone of some kind and with 23% of teens who now own a tablet too, more than 90% of the teenagers have stated that they go online at least once a day. With these many users online, we run into a place bias known as “filter bubble.” What’s more is that this number will keep on going higher as new technologies are being released. Since, the internet is surely the fastest and the most efficient way to find any news in almost no time, it could easily deviate us from our thinking of the point to something else.

The Internet that is supposed to connect us to the world, improve the democracy by helping people find the people with same thought-mentality, or let us share our views about something wholly new, it is the very thing that’s blocking our ways and is giving us personalized feeds of our social media accounts which at time is just the thing you want, things at the reach of just one key stroke, but at times this could just be the thing we don’t want to see. When the internet curates the informations that reaches to our eyes, a “filter bubble” is created; an expression brought up by a TED-talker: Eli Pariser. He refers to this bubble as if this is something we live in and is blocking our views to the outside world. Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Youtube, Twitter and Netflix are some of the few curators of the “personalized” feeds that provides us with informations “it think we want to see but not necessarily what we need to see.” (Eli Pariser) Companies like these uses a combination of complex algorithm to customize the feed page according to the individual’s interest and curates what gets in and whats get edited out. The result is a crunched up summarization of the all the informations we shouldn’t be getting. For example: if you support the Republicans and watch a lot of its video on Youtube, there are high chance that Youtube will filter out the other side of the political spectrum.

Even though, there will always be one video from outside the “filter bubble,” people tend not to choose it because they know it doesn’t matches up to their expectations, ideals, and thinking, therefore, resisting the urge to go out of their comfort zone. To quote Eli Pariser, there is always existing “struggle going on between our aspirational self and our more impulsive present.” (Eli Pariser) We want to watch the new bill release from the Democratic side but we feel more relatable to the Republican side of it. Hence, as a Democratic country, we should press our citizens to follow both sides of the spectrum, no matter in what categories, to level the ground so that we have a fair and an unbiased understanding and thinking towards the topic than being on one side of the see-saw!

Burst Your Bubble

Source: Don’t Bubble

On the second day of government class, we did an assignment on bias and filter bubbles (Parish Government). I had never thought about this topic and how it could potentially be related to government. It was shocking to me to discover how what we search on our computers and phones enables our later searches to be narrowed down to seemingly only what we want to see. Who would have thought that when the person sitting next to me in class googled the exact same thing that I did at the exact same time, different search results popped up for both of us. Some articles were higher up on the list on my search and some articles that popped up on her search weren’t even present on mind. Internet sites such as Yahoo, Google, and Facebook all control what we are seeing based on the information they have “gathered” on us as individuals.

Source: Audio Editions

Sites such as Yahoo, Google, and Facebook edit what we see on the Internet based on previous searches. Google looks at everything you are doing, including where you are searching from, and uses that information to filter your searches to what it believes you will want to see. Yahoo is a personalized site where people will receive different information when searching for the same thing (TED). Facebook uses recent searches on your computer to customize the type of advertisements that pop up on the sides of your page. If you had recently searched for an SAT tutor then logged onto your Facebook account, it is likely that you will see and add for SAT online tutoring or SAT prep books. The Internet is showing us what it thinks we want to see based on past searches instead of what we need to see. We don’t have a choice of what gets edited in and we don’t see what gets edited out. Factors such as political beliefs play a major role in what the Internet filters for a specific person (TED). If someone is constantly searching for a certain political party, the Internet will eventually detect those searches and start to filter our searches so that we are only seeing the results that mirror our political beliefs. We are cut off from other’s innovative thoughts about certain factors and find ourselves stuck in a box of our own beliefs not willing to accept other points of view. We become trapped and see no way other than our own while there are so many different ideas floating around that could be better or that could add on to and improve our own thoughts. Being deprived of all ideas does not improve an individual and his/her knowledge but rather hinders him/her.

We need to have some control on what gets through and what doesn’t because, sometimes, the limited information given to us only isolates us from the rest of the world and important issues that we should be cognizant of. This disconnection from the rest of the world can easily harm our society instead of help it. Being unaware of certain issues and view points just because an individual searched for an opposing view is trapping him/her in a bubble that he/she cannot burst. I believe that we must work to burst this filter bubble in which we are confined in order to broaden our perspectives on issues that involve opinions and ideas other than our own.