Monday, November 5, 2012
Election 2012
Early voting numbers are down in Travis County compared to the turn out for the election four years ago. Even though the presidential race is tight this year with numerous propositions and local races to consider, early voting turn out in Travis County remained lower this year then in 2008 coming far behind the rest of the state. In an article from the Statesman, it states other counties in Texas set records high this year with a higher turnout of early voters then in the past. In 2004, Travis County counted nearly fifty percent of eligible voters who casted their vote early compared to the thirty two percent of Travis County who voted as of Friday, November 2, of this year. All over the city people waited anxiously in line for multiple hours to cast their vote. It was brought to my knowledge that people were being turned away on early election day because of the mass turnouts and the over crowding of polling places. I question as to why there is such a drastic difference in a four year span with voter turnouts? A director of the Center for Public Policy claims the reason to blame for the lower turnout rate is due to the 11 city charter amendments and seven bond proposals. Other people argued his case and think that there are a lot of things that factor into it and also people might be waiting until election day to vote or are choosing to not participate in the voting process at all. I feel some people might need more time to focus on the different propositions and give themselves more time to come to a final decision.
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I read a blog titled “Election 2012” today and all though there were plenty of statements made; there wasn’t a lot of numbers or hard evidence to back up those statements. A reader wants irrefutable evidence and statistics to be able to come to the same conclusion as the author or, in other words, to be convinced by the author to see the issue as they do. Also, the embedded link is confusing because it does not lead to an individual article that the editorial refers to, but to the home page of the website. This makes it very difficult to research the information being discussed. I don't know about you but I like to research everything before I form my opinion.
ReplyDeleteThe message or purpose of the editorial is also very unclear. Is the editorial about the lack of early voting or is it about the fact that early voting was crowded because of everything that was on the ballad or is it about both? The author should attempt to offer up a clear solution to a clear problem and I did not feel as if that was accomplished. The author chose a very interesting topic that should be discussed, but as a reader, I was left with many unanswered questions.