Who Will Win the Primaries?

As most of you know, primary elections are held to determine which candidate each party will endorse as their official candidate for the upcoming election. Both parties have primary elections in just a few short months and I'm very interested to see who each party will nominate. An interesting thing to note: The democratic party has narrowed it down to about 4-5 serious candidates while the republican party has a much more crowded field numbering 14+ (as demonstrated in this photo).

Who do you think will win the primary vote for the Republicans? The Democrats? Who do you WANT to win?

Links to: Information about the Republican Primary Elections

                Information about Democratic Primary Elections

Closed Primaries

The more and more I read about political party primary elections, the more and more ridiculous the idea of an open primary seems to me. This article made an interesting analogy that really resonated with me. The article said that forcing a political party to hold an open primary is like making a sports team let their opponent choose their starting lineup before a game. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. In Minnesota, members of both political parties are trying to fight state legislature that forces them to hold open primaries (it doesn't seem very constitutional to me to force the parties to do this).

What are your thoughts on Primary elections? Do you feel they should be open or closed? Are there any benefits of an open primary that I am ignoring? 

Straight Ticket Voting

Straight ticket voting, in a nutshell, is when a person goes to vote, and there is a button that says "Vote all Republican, or Vote all Democrat". It's one of the more concerning (yet interesting) election-related concepts I've come across in my time. 

In my opinion I think it's best to vote for a person, not a party. I personally find voting straight ticket a bit unintelligent.

The National Conference of State Legislatures shows us that, as of July 26th 2015, only 10 states still permit there to be a straight ticket voting button. Utah, naturally, is one of them. I feel that because Utah allows there to be a straight ticket voting button, Democratic candidates have a much lower chance of winning any office, at any level.

I'm interested to know your personal opinion on straight ticket voting. Should we allow these 10 states to continue to offer this voting option? Do you believe in voting for specific people based on their policies (regardless of party), or do you believe in voting for a party regardless of whoever their chosen candidate is? Thoughts? 

Public Distrust of Authority

Recently in class we have been discussing how recently (the last 50 years or so), the citizens of the United States largely distrust the government. However, before Vietnam, Watergate, and other scandals, the government was largely viewed in a positive light by the public. I recently found this set of data from Pew's Research Center that was very intriguing. 
During an in-class discussion we as a class talked about how many of the things that make citizens distrust authorities are scandals, conspiracies, and violations of morals. And I was intrigued by this idea that we don't trust the government because of a series of isolated events. My intrigue came as a result of looking at the data from Pew's Research Center. I noticed a correlation: Whenever the unemployment rate was high, trust of government was high, and vice versa (You can see this for yourself by clicking on the data set).
What I'm interested to know is: Do you think that public distrust is more related to scandals, or poor economy? Or perhaps a different cause? What is the primary reason for our general lack of trust and faith in the government?

Donald Trump??

In a recent CNN poll, Donald Trump is leading all Republican candidates with  32% of voters choosing to support him. This is worrisome because Donald Trump is a guy who has some very alarming and questionable opinions and viewpoints. Yet he leads the polls once again.

As many people are aware, there seems to be this social media trend that everyone is going to "vote for Donald Trump as a joke". This was funny for about a day and now is very concerning. This man now leads the polls! To me this is evidence of a country that largely doesn't seem to care where it's going, or who leads it. Voter turnout is the worst it's been in a long time and a lot of the people who do show up are doing stupid things like this. How do we get our country to care about politics again? How do we get more voter turnout so that whoever we elect as president is legitimately the chosen representative of the masses and not just a group with select interests?

Relevancy of the Constitution in the Modern World (Unit 1)

In an article written in 2013, author Robert Parry asks the question "Is the Constitution Still Relevant?" which in my opinion, is a more than fair question to be raising. 

It's easy to tell that this article is a little bit liberally biased, but it raises some good points. Right Wing conservatives often believe in strict interpretation of the constitution while the liberal Left Wing believes that the constitution is an outdated piece of old parchment and that it has no relevance in today's world. These conflicting views naturally create a lot of gridlock in congress. The Liberals do have a point: the world is very different than it was 225+ years ago when this document was created. But the constitution does do some good things and thus conservatives feel that things are fine the way they are.

What I want to know is this: Do you feel that the Constitution still has relevancy today? Or do you believe it's time for change to occur?

Does the Supreme Court Have Too Much Power? (Unit 1)

On June 26th, 2015 the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage throughout the United States with a vote of 5-4, a decision that has had both positive and negative reception (see NYC Celebration). 

Prior to this decision, many states had already legalized same-sex marriage but a few states persisted in their attempts to keep gay marriage illegal. In a case known as Obergefell v. Hodges, a gay couple who resided in Ohio had to travel to Maryland in order to get married and when they returned, the state of Ohio treated them in a manner that the Supreme Court deemed unconstitutional. So unconstitutional in fact, that the Supreme Court decided to legalize same-sex marriage in all 50 states.

I am not here to say whether or not I agree with the Supreme Court's decision, that's a different debate; but what I'm interested to know is: Do you guys (members of AP Gov) feel that the Supreme Court has too much power? Or perhaps too much authority? Should the Judicial Branch be scaled back or is their amount of power appropriate? Thoughts??