learn more about politics

This past election I feel that I learned a lot more about politics than I ever have. I asked a lot of questions and heard a lot of opinions. It’s still a learning process for me, but I feel well more informed than I was last year.

I love politics and I know about the up to date politics, but I would like to learn more about politics in the past and the way things worked back then…To understand the world today, you must know history.

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.

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! :)

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.

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.

This past mid-term elections really managed to peak my interest, I have started actually reading multiple political blogs and newsites daily.