Does Your Vote Count?

Originally posted 2008-05-21 05:31:19 -- Lockwood's essay is part of Aaron Barlow's Race and New Media project. Lockwood's observation: "It is the media’s responsibility to stop broadcasting this election as if one specific race or gender matters the most, it’s almost as if they are encouraging women and minorities to not vote." -- is particularily intriguing today as the DNC Rules Committee decides what to do about Michigan and Florida.-- bumped, cho

Does Your Vote Count?

As we all know we are well into the 2008 presidential election process, and out of the three remaining candidates one happens to be an African American man and the other a woman; what makes this so news worthy is that both of these two candidates actually have a good chance at becoming the next president. The media has focused this election more on race and gender and has gone as far as asking people if they were going to vote based on the candidates race or gender, never mind the political views and policies, we can worry about that once one is selected to represent the political party. Thanks to the media, the American people are aware of the situation involving the former reverend of Senator Barack Obama, and no matter how old the news and subject matter may be, that topic is still brought up. It seems that the media implies that only a certain group in America decide the election.

Race and gender play a large role in electing the next candidate, but there seems to be a hidden story within this election that leaves one to question which groups will decide the elected candidate. The answer may seem to be the Superdelegates. Now, what is a super delegate and what exactly makes these voters so special? Well, they aren’t special because they have super powers or anything close to it, but it is what separates them from other voters. The super delegates are people who currently, or at one point, held a political position and are elected party officials with no ties to a specific political party. Now, that seems much like someone who is a voter and is registered under the independent party, but independent voters aren’t “super” and super delegates tend to have money and political pull.

But that’s not really the hidden story. The hidden story is this: each time the question of who is going to decide who wins is asked super delegates is one answer, the other is middle class working white Americans. Now here’s the problem with this it’s bad enough race is overshadowing the presidential election when it comes to the candidates but to do it to the voters is wrong. How is it the media can figure out exactly what races vote counts the most? There are tons of different censuses but to try and find the census that says which race in a specific election will determine the outcome seems like a bit of a stretch. An article posted on Cnn.com states that there is a census showing an increase in the minority population, more specifically the community. This census was done as recently as May 10th 2006 and according to this census: “The U.S population grew by 2.8 million between July 1, 2004 and July 1, 2005. Hispanics accounted for 1.3 million of that increase”.

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Since this main topic is minorities and voting, lets go back four years. People tend to associate minorities with hip hop more specifically African Americans, and in 2004 there was a campaign in the hip hop community with a goal to get more minorities and the younger generation to vote. Their slogan was Slogan? where celebrities such as Russell Simmons, Rapper Jadakiss, and Hip Hop Mogul Sean Puffy Combs amongst others were seen wearing these shirts bearing the slogan. There was an increase noticed with votes, possibly due to this campaign. Four years ago there was a positive message being said by the media that everyone’s vote, including all races and minority groups would count in the election. Now, it seems the media is singling-out one specific race on a daily basis, WHAT RACE? Remember minority groups, like blacks, Hispanics and women are still playing catch up when it comes to voting. The younger generation is just starting to show some interest in politics and who is going to run the country and are becoming more active in the voting process. The question whether or not the Vote or Die campaign actually worked in achieving a higher turnout, but it did get peoples attention four years ago. It was John Kerry and George W. Bush running then, and now it is Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

As a nation, we can’t forget about John McCain, however, he doesn’t seem to set the world on fire when it comes to the youth or relating to the women of America. So whom does McCain appeal to? It is probable to believe that the older white American is his greatest support, and more specifically older white men. This is not to say that all of the older white American people are racist or sexiest because that wouldn’t be fair or true, but facing that as a possible reality is safe to say. There are some people who don’t want to see an African American or a women win the presidency, and in all fairness there are people of the younger generation as well as middle aged people who feel this way as well.

It is the media’s responsibility to stop broadcasting this election as if one specific race or gender matters the most, it’s almost as if they are encouraging women and minorities to not vote. For readers that are familiar with the show on comedy central: The Root of All Evil, towards the end of the show the host has the two comedians give their last statement in a form that resembles a ripple or domino effect. So, think of this in terms of the media and if they continue to broadcast and promote a specific race and gender as being more important in the voting process, maybe some other groups will become discouraged. They may feel that their vote doesn’t actually matter and decide that they shouldn’t vote because it’s a waste of time. And if to the people, voting is seen as a waste of time, then they may also decide not to watch the always-exciting debates… where would this leave America?

Well, it would lead us into a constant stale mate because there would be only one race/ gender voting. This may lead to half of the race voting one way and the other half voting another, leaving the candidates to be hard-pressed in raising enough money to run a decent campaign. This would lead to a craze and people may decide to stop voting all together because they will find that only certain voters matter in deciding elections.

As a nation, we are far from all American minorities or young voters becoming discouraged to place a vote but it is true that people may become discouraged with the idea of this scenario. No matter what the news stations want to continue to run and promote, the reality is that everyone’s vote counts, not just middle-aged blue collar working white males or “super delegates”.