Election Test

A big decision for a politician is to decide to run for a political office. This takes a lot of thought and consideration, mainly because it takes a lot of work for a candidate to be successful. The most important aspect in a campaign, however, is getting money and endorsements from people and PAC (Political Action Committees). These committees are groups which will give money to campaigns usually in the form of advertising, and exist to promote a certain political cause. Most of the money they give to candidates is in a form called soft money. This money usually goes to create advertising which technically does not endorse the candidate, but strongly encourages people to vote for them. This is a very important aspect of gaining support for candidates and essential if they wish to win the election, mainly because there is no limit to how much money they can receive this way. The other way a candidate gains funding is with hard money, which is money given directly to them through donations. The disadvantage to this is that there are limits to how much money can be received. Through both of these methods, a candidate must gain enough support and funding to make themselves appeal more to the voting population.
The entire purpose of getting this funding is to sway voters to want to vote for the candidate. The groups of voters that they target is those who are moderate, and could potentially vote for any candidate. Voters who belong to political parties, which are groups of people who share similar political ideas and seek to elect a candidate who has these ideas, will usually vote for the candidate from their party, so these voters are not targeted as much by the candidate. While the goal of a candidate is to sway the moderates to vote for them, they are competing against the media and what it wants to voters to do. All media has a bias, which means that it will tend to lean either left or right politically, and this bias can affect how people will vote. If moderate voters watch news which is mainly slanted to the left, they may be more likely to vote for the more liberal candidate. Because of this it may be difficult for a candidate to sway all voters opinions, and may only sway the opinions of those who take in media which is biased in favor of them.
This method, I believe, is democratic, but it is not completely fair. There are so many things pulling voters in many different directions, trying to get them to vote for a certain candidate, that you have to wonder if they really are making a fair choice when they vote. This is why I think that low voter turnout is not necessarily bad for America. Voter turnout is how many people show up to vote on election day. The reason I believe that a low turnout is not necessarily bad is because the more people that vote, the more likely it is that a larger number of people are not completely informed about everything. They may have been manipulated to vote for someone, or blindly voting with their parties candidate, or just randomly picking someone. The less voters you have, the better quality each vote is.