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Tag: vote

  • Lil Jon Wants Millennials To Rock The Vote

    Remember when MTV began running continuous campaigns to “Rock the Vote” in 1990? Despite super stars like Madonna advocating the importance of young people getting out to the polls, voters under 30 were still largely absent from the democratic process.

    In 2010, the last midterm election, less than 25% of voters ages 18 to 29 bothered to cast a ballot. Eva Guidarini of the Harvard Institute of Politics paints an bleaker prediction for the future. Her research concludes that 23% of people under 30 are expected to vote this year.

    Barack Obama seemed to fire up the youth in 2008. No doubt, young people were interested in being part of history by voting for the first black president of the United States. Millennial voting reached an apex in 2008 with 52% casting a ballot. However, by 2012, that number dropped to 45%.

    So what’s being done to change the apathetic attitude of the young? Rapper Lil Jon, Whoopi Golberg, Fred Armisen, and Lena Dunham are featured in an online music video called Turn Out For What, which is a parody off Lil Jon’s song Turn Down For What.

    The message of the video essentially asks what is important to you. What is going to drive you to the polls? Is it gun control? Marriage equality? Immigration? Student debt? Climate change? Lil Jon is “turning out” for the legalization of marijuana.

    So far the campaign seems to be working. “There are over 130 million people that watched the Turn Out For What video on YouTube, and our goal is to make voting as popular as the song,” said Rock The Vote spokeswoman Audrey Gelman. She continued, “We love the idea of turning a party anthem into an anthem for civic engagement.”

    The true test of the video’s efficiency will come on November 4, the midterm election. Although Gelman admitted that voter turnout across all age groups is traditionally lower during the midterm election because there aren’t presidential candidates on the ballot.

  • George P. Bush: Beacon For Latino Voters?

    George P. Bush, son of former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and nephew and grandson of presidents, has put his hat in the political ring as a candidate for Texas Land Comissioner. What’s so special about that? Well, besides being the latest Bush to boldly step into the political arena, Bush is of mixed race. His father, Jeb is married to a hispanic woman named Columba, according to Reuters.

    Some are hoping that this will help draw more latino voters to support the Republican party. “This certainly helps the Republican Party present an image of a party that not only seeks Hispanic votes but is running Hispanics for office,” Mark P. Jones, a political analyst at Rice University in Houston.

    “This is clearly beneficial in Texas, because every other Republican candidate for a non-judicial statewide race in 2014 will be a white male,” Jones said.

    Bush, a lawyer and co-founder and chairman of the Hispanic Republicans of Texas, is active in the latino community, and would be good for the image white male-dominated party. According to CBS, he speaks Spanish and has worked to stifle the expectations caused by his family’s standing, but he is still being spotlighted by the Republican party, in order to garner attention from an increasingly influential latino community.

    However, the question is, when will we stop assuming that people are so, um, unintelligent that they will vote for a candidate or a party simply based on the color of the candidate’s skin? Do people really do that? Well, apparently a few, but not enough to make broad assumptions.

    State Representative Jose Menendez, a Democrat, said he considers the assumption “insulting”, as he should. “I think the Hispanic community is not a monolithic community, it is a community that is independent.”, he said.

    Menendez pointed out that he believes Hispanics support “policies over personalities” just like anyone else, and Cal Jillson, a political analyst at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, agrees with that sentiment.

    “There will be a few people who are attracted to Bush personally due to his connection to Hispanic Texas, but there will be just a few,” Jillson said.

    Surely we don’t think that little of our fellow man, to assume he will blindly follow someone else’s ideals because his skin is the same color? I know that a few will, but surely not the majority.

    What do you think? Would you vote for a candidate simply based on ethnicity?

    Image via wikimedia commons

  • Astrodome Demolition in the Hands of Houston Voters

    When it was constructed in 1965, the Astrodome was nicknamed, “The Eighth Wonder of the World.” At the time, the Astrodome was the world’s first multi-purpose domed stadium. Standing 208 feet tall, and with a roof-span of 642 feet, the 400,000 square foot stadium is still one of the most influential pieces of American architecture. That fact could soon be erased, though, if Houston voters decide to not support Proposition 2.

    Proposition 2, if passed, would allocate $217 million toward the renovation of the Astrodome. However, the newly renovated stadium would not hold future games for the Houston Astros, Houston Texans, or any other sports teams; instead, the Astrodome would become an event center and exhibition space. The floor would be raised to ground-level, and a green space would also be created outside the stadium.

    While $217 million seems like a steep figure to turn a dilapidated stadium into an event space, one has to consider the alternative. As it currently stands, the city of Houston spends $2-3 million per year to simply keep the structure standing as a storage-space. Considering the Astrodome has been out of commission since 2009, that means at least $8 million has been spent to keep the structure from falling. Costs of demolishing the stadium aren’t any cheaper. In fact, a study created in 2010 stated that it would cost approximately $78 million total to demolish the dome, which is greater than 1/3 of the cost to renovate the stadium.

    The cheapest estimate to demolish the stadium currently stands at $29 million – an unlikely figure considering the 2010 study allocated $20 million alone for asbestos removal and plaza construction following the demolition. Whatever the costs, Rice University Political Scientist Bob Stein points out that the money has to come from somewhere: “That’s money that the county’s going to have to find. It might have some short term borrowing, it may be able to take it out of reserve funds. But it’s money that the county would have spent on something else, hopefully something else that we all wanted. What do you get for tearing down the Astrodome for 30-million dollars? A pile of rubble.”

    “The New Dome Experience,” if passed, would take 2.5 years to complete, meaning it would be done just in time for the 2017 Super Bowl planned for the Houston Texan’s Reliant Stadium. Based on America’s obsession with the Super Bowl, perhaps Houston could just sell advertisement space on the side of the Astrodome to mitigate the costs? We’ll find out soon, as Houston voters make the fateful decision at the polls today.

    Image via YouTube

  • Google Compiles Voting Info into One Easy Tool

    Google knows that people use their service to find information on voting: when, where, how, who, etc. In order to make it a little easier, Google has compiled all of this information into one place, and they call it their Voter Information tool.

    You can access the tool here. Just enter your home address and that’s it.

    The voter tool shows your election-day polling location, as well as early voting locations (if applicable). On the right, you have a full summary of the ballot you’ll see in the voting booth – including national and local races. Each candidate on the ticket is provided with links to their Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, and official campaign sites.

    Here’s what the tool looks like when you enter your address:

    “The tool is easy to embed on any website and is open source so developers can modify it to create custom versions. We’re working with a number of media partners to ensure the tool is accessible across the web, and partners like Foursquare and AT&T are doing great work building apps on our Civic Information API.

    We hope this tool will help make getting to the polls and casting your ballot as simple as possible,” says Google in a blog post.

    Google’s Voter Information Tool is nestled within their larger Politics & Elections hub, which also provides election trends, insights, results, and links to various other resources on Google+ and YouTube.