learn more about politics

with my first presidential election coming up this november, i figure it’s time to learn a little about the issues that each candidate is standing for. one place i’ve gotten warmed up with was select2008.com, which let you vote on issues that are being debated for this upcoming election, then it tells you which votes that you made corresponded with which candidates.

another good starting point for me was cnn’s election center, which has some pretty good coverage on what the candidates plan to do for each topic.

to round out the gaps, i’ve been going to wikipedia, which offers a neutral point of view, but still has pretty extensive coverage of a lot of the issues.

I’ve never paid enough attention to politics to be able to have an educated conversation about them. The first time I voted I just did what my parents did, now that I’ve learned a little I realize that I voted for the completely wrong person,(we all know who that is). I realize now how important it is to participate in the politics of our nation. My age group 18-26, votes the least out of everyone. I see this as a problem because of the fact that we are the future of this country and if we don’t vote now, it’s going to effect us greatly later. I plan to make very well educated votes come November.

watching and reading about the elections these past few months has helped me learn a lot about how the political parties work, what the real issues are, and i just generally feel like a more functional member of society. i’m going to be a legitimately informed voter come november.

I’m taking a political science class this semester called “The Science of American Political Campaigns,” and it’s pretty much the coolest class ever. Not only have I learned more about the candidates and the current election, but I’ve learned a lot about the history of voting in America, how it works in different states, etc. I ALSO decided who I want to vote for in the primaries and changed my political affiliation from Republican to Democrat so that I can vote on April 22nd.

I’ve accomplished all I set out to do for this goal—I’m going to consider it complete!

I found another cool website called Geek the Vote. It shows where all the presidential candidates stand on issues of science and technology. Pretty awesome! :)

Alright. I’ve got an independent study with one of my teachers so I can FINALLY take a world history class. I think that’s the first step in really understanding where all of the world’s issues are coming from.

Unless I really get on this goal, I won’t be voting next year.

I heard of this new website called Political Base that’s supposed to be an unbiased wiki for all political candidates and their platforms. Looks interesting.

I’ve been learning more through podcasts, but I have 2 immediate subgoals that I want to accomplish:

1. Figure out which political party I actually want to be registered with
2. Decide who I support and who I don’t support for the upcoming election and why

I also signed up for a class for next semester called “American Political Campaigns” that looks pretty cool (PL SC 130 at PSU for anyone who’s interested).

I took the Political Compass Test to see kind of roughly where I stand politically:

Economic Left/Right: -1.62
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.26

So… at least now I have a general idea. I think the next step is to find some reliable news sources (I’ll be looking mainly at podcasts) and think about which issues are really important to me.

i’ll come back to this. there are too many other things i want to learn about first.