Obama and Cuba

As a Cuban and as a South Floridian, I really like Obama’s stand on dealing with the new “Cuban government.” I agree with him that the new president should meet with Raul Castro to try to better Cuban-American relations. Also, the new president should attempt to instill Democratic ideas in Cuba. Furthermore, I agree with Obama, that the US government should loosen “the restrictions on remittances from family members to the people of Cuba, as well as travel restrictions for family members who want to visit their family members in Cuba.” This sounds like a great idea, and I believe it will benefit the Cuban people living in Cuba. It is time that Cuban-US relations change. I also agree with him that this should occur in other countries that the US has a hostile relationship with. Talking with those that we disagree with and attempting to establish friendly relations is certainly the way to go.

Tuesday's Democratic Debate in Texas

After seeing the Tuesday democratic presidential debate, I changed my mind on the candidate that I am supporting. This is probably the case with many other Clinton supporters. My coworkers and I had a small talk about the issues and the two candidates, and we basically had to agree that Clinton was too emotional. “Who wants an emotional president, that might wake up one morning and blow up the whole country,” my coworker jokingly said, but he is right. Clinton’s attitude and actions could have a negative effect on manner in which American policy is carried out, and I don’t want anyone’s feelings affecting the country that I live in. Many of us were Clinton supporters, but after seeing the manner in which Obama talked, we said wait a minute he’s definitely the better candidate. Also, after winning the votes of ten consecutive states, there is a big possibility that Clinton is out of the picture. So I guess now I have made a prediction on the two obvious candidates running for the presidency in November: Obama and McCain. As polls have recently showed the American public, Obama is most likely to win the presidency. I guess America will be making history this presidential election.

Technology as a Factor in the Increase of Young Voter Turnout.

As an article by Openers: The Plain Dealer Political Blog demonstrates, young voter turnout for this year’s primaries has increased two or three times more than in 2000 (voters under 30). When asked, younger voters said they were itching for a chance to make a change. They have succeed. The article stresses that a major factor for the increase in voter turnout under 30, is encouragement from their peers. How? You might ask, here are a few ways that younger voters are spreading their enthusiam to become active and Vote:

· Cell phones (we text enough as it is, so why not send text messages on election day to remind all your friends to vote)
· Laptops (god knows we are on our computers Iming or on Myspace.com and Facebook.com during class hours, so why not send all your friends messages or post a message on your profile telling them to vote)
· Conversations (instead of talking about how much you love your new haircut, talk about something that matters, such as the importance that our vote has on the US presidential elections)

Also here are some things that student like us are doing to spread the message:

1. Showing up at political events, recording it, and blogging about it.

2.Starting new organizations such as the Student Association for Voter Empowerment, founded by Matthew Segal (22 year-old).

3. Promoting their candidate’s campaign through Facebook or Myspace

Muslims and the 2008 Presidential Elections

Ahmer Muzammil, author of American Muslims and Presidential Elections 2008 makes an excellent point. The article stresses the need for American Muslims to become more involved in the presidental elections by voting. Muslims are a growing majority in the US, since 20,000 Americans convert to Islam yearly and many Muslims are migrating to the West due to their country’s lack of human rights and ill treatment of their citizens. According to Muzammil, the Muslimsin population in the US is almost as large as the Jewish population, thus just like this large diaspora, they need to have their voices heard. As a Muslim the author advices Muslims:
· Do not strictly vote for one party (as most Cubans do).*
· Do not make one party the enemy (Bush is not the entire Republican party).*
· Muslims should voice their discontent with American Foreign Policy.
· Make the US politicians realize that American Muslims are a voting community.
· Muslim citizens need to become register voters (if they are not registered) and VOTE.

*Note: The comments made in parenthesis are my comments and do not reflect the views of the author of the article.

Young Poll Workers Can Make a Difference

As a young voter, I have to agree with MTV’s article “Young Poll Workers Can Help Prevent Another Vote-Counting Fiasco In November.” It is true that young people can make a difference by volunteering in the polls. Since numerous poll sites are currently using new technology to record poll results, I believe that younger employees are more qualified to work since they are more familiar with the technology that is being used. As the article emphazises, older poll workers are “unfamiliar and intimidated” with the new machines being used at voting sites. Furthermore, due to their familiarity with technology, the presence of young poll voters could help the U.S. avoid another fiasco as occurred in the 2000 election were votes had to be recounted. If votes have to be recounted, younger individuals are more agile to count votes by hand. A problem that has been reported in the primaries this year is long lines lasting 9-12 hours, in states such as New Jersey and Georgia. In order to avoid this younger individuals can help since they can better guide individuals with their agility, and perhaps their help can speed up the voting process.
Certain things that could be done in order to speed the voting process and reduce fiascos during this and other elections include:

• Better train poll workers
• Replace lever and punch card machines with electronic or optical scan machines
• Conduct random checks of poll machines in order to avoid fiascos
• Avoid using machines that could be easily tampered with.
  

Revisting the Results of Super Tuesday

First and for most I would like to begin by fixing a big detail in my previous blog. I wrote my last blog Wednesday, however, I did not have a chance to post it until Sunday. By then Mitt Romney had freshly dropped out of the presidential race, and now the two Republicans that remain are Mike Huckabee and John McCain. Given this piece of information, Huckabee was able only to win 5 states, while McCain won 9 states. Furthermore, McCain had the upper hand on the number of delegates that were won, thus it is extremely easy to predict the Republican winner from here, and I have no doubt that John McCain will be the winner. On the other hand, the Democratic winner is far from clear. Clinton has won the vote of 9 states, while Obama won 11 states; also the number of delegates each won is extremely close. There is no clear winner here. Although numerous websites present Obama as most likely to win, I believe that Hillary Clinton is the stronger candidate in this case for she has more experience. However, I will refrain at this moment from making any further predictions about who will win the Democratic nomination, for I believe it is an extremely close race and at this moment, and Obama or Clinton could come out victorious. We will just have to wait until Tuesday to see who will have the upper hand, Obama or Clinton.

Super Tuesday's Results

After Super Tuesday, the candidates that are in the lead are Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain, however, it is important to note that Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney are close behind. Super Tuesday is designed to demonstrate which candidates from both parties are in the lead and ultimately will have the upper hand in the primary elections, however after tuesday, the possible winners were not crystal clear since Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney were only a few points behind their opponents. How will the primary elections turn out? Who will win their party's nomination? We will just have to wait and see until more states vote in their primaries and a clear winner can be recognized.

Super Tuesday

With Super Tuesday coming up in this tuesday, it will be interesting to see which candidate will take the lead and most likely end up winning their party's nomination for the presidency. However, it will be interisting to find out wether the candidate that will be in the lead after Super Tuesday will actually end up winning the nomination for president since as of now the race is pretty close (at least between the Democrats Clinton and Obama and the Republicans Romney and McCain). Thus I will continue to keep you posted on which candidate, from both the Democratic and Republican parties, is one step closer to being their party's nominee.
I predict that the Democratic candidate in the November ballot will be Hillary Clinton, while the Republican candidate on the ballot will be McCain. From there, let the best candidate win (of course this will determined by the opinion of the US citizens, unless of course something like the 2000 election occurs again).
So I leave you all with this question to ponder upon: Would the US presidency continue to belong to the white man, or will the US be ready for a change and choose a woman or perhaps an African-American as the next president? I anxiously await the November election to see if the US is finally ready for a CHANGE! I think it is, do you?

The Floridian Primaries

I want to begin by apologizing for not posting earlier since Tuesday was election day in Florida and crucial to the essence of this blog. With that said, the Floridian presidential nominees are Republican John McCain and Democrat Hilary Clinton. However, as many of you might already know the Democratic vote did not count. Why? The Democratic Party was penalized for early voting. Why did the Democrats even bother to vote? Well, look at it this way: if every Democrat in the state of Florida voted (or the majority) then it is clearer to see which candidate is more favorable. Since Florida is one of the four crucial states in the presidential elections (due to the large quantities of electoral votes it possesses) it gives one a better picture of which candidate is in the lead. Therefore regardless of how cliché this might sound: Every Vote Counts. I would like to end this post by thanking every individual that voted, you did a good thing!