Presidential Election and Voting

¶ … Voting isn't just important to Democracy. Voting is Democracy." I have long been proud of our country, and honored to participate in its electoral process, even if that process sometimes seems complicated and flawed. As a 38-year-old, I have voted in several different elections, all in the same voting precinct of Meigs, Georgia. My values, attitudes, and beliefs have been strongly shaped by my community. I am a person with strong and immutable values, dedication to faith and family, and to my country.

When I first registered to vote at the age of 18, I did not yet realize the power I had as an individual citizen. I still felt like a teenager, not quite a child anymore, but poised to be a fully functioning citizen of the United States. Yet it would be several more election cycles for me to recognize the potency of our democracy. Registering to vote was natural and simple for me. I remember filling out the forms, signing my name, and presenting proof of address.

I also needed to show my identification, something that is apparently a controversial thing. I do not understand why showing identification is controversial. As Von Spakovsky puts it, showing identification is "necessary to protect the integrity of elections and access to the voting process." When I was registering to vote, I remember the poll manager looking closely at my identification and smiling when my paperwork was in order; I was now able to vote. I was now an empowered member of my community.

My parents were proud of me, but we did not celebrate because it was considered a right and a duty to vote, not an achievement. I was lucky to have been born in this country, and voting was simply viewed as part of my commitment to uphold the values of the American constitution. I do not believe there are any obstacles to registering to vote, other than a person's own laziness or sense of entitlement. The mandatory voter identification process is not an obstacle.

" Despite tiresome false claims to the contrary, there is no evidence that voter ID decreases the turnout of voters or has a disparate impact on minority, poor, or elderly voters -- the overwhelming majority of Americans have photo ID or can easily obtain one," (Von Spakovsky). Many people in my state use an absentee ballot, or can vote from their military base.

In fact, the government facilitates the process of registering to vote and actually voting because it is part of the democratic process to ensure equal access to the polls. Accusations of excluding certain groups of people are unfounded (Von Spakovsky). When registering to vote, we have the option of affiliating ourselves with a political party. Instead of automatically choosing the party affiliation of my parents and peers, I genuinely tried to be objective and to have an open mind.

Thinking about the issues that mattered most to me, such as abortion, the economy, and the military, I researched the options and have registered to vote as a Republican. I remain a Republican until this day, although I do know people who have switched their party affiliations more than once and even those who vote for third parties like the Libertarian Party. One of the features of a democracy is the ability of the individual to express his or her beliefs without fear of reprimand.

I even know several independent voters who prefer no party affiliation. The main problem with that approach, though, is they cannot vote in the primaries, something that I have come to see as being important to preserving the democratic process. For the purposes of rhetorical analysis, I located an article in The New Yorker entitled, "President Trump," by Evan Osnos. The author does not state his credentials or qualifications for writing the article, but generally this publication is considered to be reliable, credible, and trustworthy even if not completely unbiased.

After reading the article, I noticed that the author does liberally quote and refer to primary sources, which are theoretically checked by professional fact-checkers at The New Yorker. Therefore, I can assume that the author has a high degree of credibility when writing this piece on a possible Trump presidency. In "President Trump," the author's main purpose is to imagine and discuss what a Trump presidency might actually look like, based on what Trump has said and done during the campaign.

The language used to describe Trump is generally objective but occasionally disparaging in this article. For example, by the third paragraph, Osnos calls the Trump campaign a "spectacle," filled with "compulsive feuds and slurs," and a "detachment from established facts," (39). These are inflammatory words, not supported by the author's own factual evidence. The author also makes an analogy between Trump and a dictator using military force when describing "his bureaucratic march toward actually assuming power," (Osnos 39).

If Trump were to win the election, he would not be "assuming" power, but he would have a mandate. On the following page, the author states, "His victory is no longer the stuff of dark comedy or fan fiction," suggesting the author does not take Trump or his campaign seriously (Osnos 40). The author also accuses Trump of flip-flopping on the issues, saying the candidate "wanders and hedges back," (Osnos 40). Therefore, it seems as if the author might be biased.

Interestingly, though, much of the article is not noticeably biased at all and simply presents evidence such as that of Trump's "First Day Project," in which the candidate creates a transition plan. One of the core objectives of the article is to speculate on how a Trump presidency would look based on the campaign, and to achieve this goal, the author cites historical precedent like "campaigns offer a surprisingly accurate view of Presidencies" from Woodrow Wilson to Jimmy Carter (Osnos 40).

According to Osnos, Trump's core principles include his view that the United States is "doing too much to try to solve the world's problems," and thereby presumably advocates non-interventionism (40). Another principle factor of the Trump platform is that "trade agreements are damaging the country" even though those agreements have been critical to the success of Trump organizations (Osnos 40). Moreover, the author acknowledges that Trump would remain committed to his mass deportation plan for undocumented immigrants.

The ACLU might disparage Trump, but the reason why the candidate remains popular is that he is not concerned at all about what the ACLU or any other person or group thinks. The Trump presidency would not preclude Trump.