US Elections: People's Choices and Voices?
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DOSSIER US elections: 2 people’s choices and voices? You are part of a youth You are an activist. Write an organisation. Write a poem and opinion article for The New York Projects create a video to encourage Times. young people to vote. How does the US presidential election work? A If maps could talk 2020 Election Results 1 Identify the states that voted democrat or republican. 2 Spot information on: election years, the candidates, the parties, the electoral votes won. Oppose the number of electoral votes to the popular votes and conclude. 3 Look at Let’s focus on… and say which electoral system you like best with a classmate. 4 Explain to a friend the difference between electoral and popular elections. Take examples that you studied in class and visit this site: 270towin.com. B Citizens denied to vote? Voter suppression as a tactic – from strict ID laws to closing polling places to purging voter rolls – is deliberately making it hard for minority communities in America to exercise their democratic right. n an interview last year Barack Obama said, “We’re set by partisan state lawmakers and administered, in the only advanced democracy that deliberately most places, by secretaries of state, who are partisan Idiscourages people from voting.” […] 40 officials. Struggle for the franchise In several Republican-leaning states, the difficulties 5 The struggle for the right to vote in the US has voters face start with the documents they are required existed as long as the country itself. In 1789, after the to produce in order to exercise their democratic right. ratification of the constitution, suffrage was extended Legislators across the country have tightened the only to white, property-owning men. Following the 45 requirements for acceptable forms of identification – abolition of slavery in the 19th century, black people this in a country where 7% of Americans do not have 10 were permitted to vote, but after a brief period when photo IDs, and the number is higher among black and black politicians began to win elections, the white Hispanic populations. majority began to institute restrictions like those that In 2016, Wisconsin reinstated strict voter ID laws, motivated King’s march from Selma. 50 ostensibly to fight voter fraud, which experts have International comparisons show how voting repeatedly found to be almost non-existent. […] 15 restrictions are a stain on US democracy. In Australia, Voter purge voting is compulsory. In Sweden, all voters are […] “Voter purging” is when officials scrub names automatically registered. Both nations rank high on from the voter rolls ostensibly to ensure people don’t an “electoral integrity index” produced by academics 55 vote twice and that people who have died or moved at Harvard University and the University of Sydney. get removed from the rolls. These are perfectly 20 Yet rather than being ranked with other major western legitimate justifications. Yet it tends to be on the rise, democracies, the US falls lower down the list alongside the Brennan Center reported, in areas and states that countries like Kosovo and Romania. previously would have been prevented from making Of particular concern in the US, said Sarah Repucci, 60 such changes by the Voting Rights Act. Places, that senior director at Freedom House, a thinktank in is, with a history of voting discrimination. And as the 25 Washington DC, “are the techniques that target Brennan Center reports, “Problems arise when states minority (mostly black) voters, instituted by remove voters who are still eligible to vote. States rely Republican-controlled state governments. Countries on faulty data that purport to show that a voter has that have targeted minority voters include Cameroon, 65 moved to another state”. Kosovo – hardly regimes that Americans would The Guardian, Nov. 8th, 2019 30 consider to be our peers.” 1 List the obstacles minorities may have to It’s no surprise that the US trails behind other overcome to be able to vote and explain why the democracies in voter turnout – about 55% of eligible right to vote is at the heart of US history. Americans voted in the 2016 elections, compared with 2 Grammar Lines 8 to 10, ”Following …vote”, say around 87% in Belgium and 78% in South Korea. which nouns are used with no article at all and 35 Partisan officials classify them as follows: singular count nouns, At every stage of the voting process, Americans face plural count nouns, uncountable nouns. hurdles determined by where they live. Election law is 3 Explain what the comparison between the USA and other countries reveals. 4 Comment on Barack Obama’s quote (l. 1-3) in a C Want to become president? tweet expressing your concern. 1 Pick out the three requirements to become a presidential candidate and explain them. 2 Compare the systems of caucuses and primaries. Identify their role in the nomination of a candidate. 3 Indicate what these numbers and date correspond to: 270, 538, January 20th. PAIR WORK How to become President of the United States 4 Create an infographic to recap what you have Video www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=2eXCG-hlaqI learnt about the Presidential election process. A fair representation? A Trust in the system? 1 Describe the graph and show what it indicates regarding public trust in government. Use the timeline and explain the reasons the trust began eroding in the 1960s and why it rose after 2001. 2 Now listen to the recording. Spot negative adjectives, nouns, expressions as well as numbers and figures and explain how they convey the lack of trust in government. 3 Focus on the commission and Trust in the institutions? (2020) comment on the solutions they suggested. Audio hatier-clic/21amc1t-ns01 4 Phonology Listen and repeat the following words: pandemic, economic. Which syllable carries the main stress? What do these words have in common? 5 You are a young member of this commission. Write a story on social media to explain your goals and propositions and encourage your friends to join you. B Why is voting so complicated? s the nation mourns civil rights icon John warnings for problems with the November presidential Lewis, a congressman and lifelong advocate election and the legitimacy of the results. 1 of voting rights, the mayhem in his home Not enough places, ballots or help Astate’s most recent election serves as another 4 Georgia’s primary election was postponed (twice 5 egregious2 example of how a citizen’s most sacred act 25 from its original March 24 date, because of fears of in a democracy – voting – was undermined and even spreading the coronavirus pandemic through in- denied after a federal law protecting voters’ rights was person voting. abandoned by a 2013 Supreme Court ruling. A million and a half Georgians applied to get absentee Georgia’s presidential primary election on June 9 was ballots that would have let them vote by mail. But an 10 a nightmare mix of inefficiency and discrimination 30 unknown number of them never received their ballots that shows how difficult it is for many Americans – and were forced to vote in person to ensure that their particularly Black Americans – to participate in their votes would be counted. Ultimately only 943,000 democracy. ballots were cast by mail. Hundreds of voters, many in majority Black areas, Georgians didn’t always know where to go to vote: 15 waited four, five and even seven hours to cast their 35 10% of polling places – including 80 in the state’s ballots3. Some even faced down police seeking to send most populous county alone – were closed because them home without having voted. [...] of the COVID-19 pandemic. The state-run website The state’s primary was an example of what should not that let voters look up where they should vote was happen in a democratic country. It is an experience down for several hours in the morning and worked 20 that has implications beyond Georgia, and that carries 40 only intermittently throughout the day. When the site was up and running, some voters still could not find the state opened two and three hours late. The new their correct polling locations and visited precincts5 systems, including printers, scanners and tablets, had where poll workers told them they couldn’t vote. trouble throughout the day, causing additional delays. Experienced poll workers were ill or feared getting 60 Precincts ran out of provisional ballots and envelopes 45 sick, so the state had to recruit, train and dispatch new and printer paper. County governments, the NAACP ones right before the election. Many poll workers were and other civil-rights groups appealed to county courts insufficiently trained and uninformed, especially about to get orders extending polling hours beyond the usual when voters were entitled to absentee, emergency and 7 p.m. to make up for the delays. One precinct didn’t provisional ballots. 65 close until 10:10 p.m. 50 There weren’t enough polling places, either. Several As if that weren’t enough, it rained on voters in long sites that normally serve 2,000 to 3,000 voters had lines with no shelter. to accommodate as many as 10,000 because of the Adrienne Jones, The Conversation, July 21st, 2020 consolidation. Some polling places, especially in majority Black 1. disorder 2. shocking 3. cast ballots: vote 55 areas, had major delays because new voting machines 4. delayed 5. election district weren’t working correctly. Many polling places across 1 List at least five obstacles Americans faced Culture Tip when voting or trying to vote. John Lewis was an American politician and civil 2 Spot the impacts of COVID-19 during Georgia’s rights leader in the 1960s.