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?