Vote for the Party, not the Person...

On November 4, 2008, while the rest of the country participated in the national presidential election, New Trier students participated in a mock election run by student alliance. As I stood in line, waiting to vote, two girls stood in front of me. One of the girls stepped up to the computer to cast her ballot, and voted for the president of her choice. When it came time for her to vote for the congressman, she turned to her friend and said, “Dan Seals is the democrat, right?” Her friend then told her that Dan Seals was indeed the democrat candidate, and the girl proceeded to vote for Dan Seals. As I watched this girl vote for Seals simply because he was the democratic candidate, I immediately remembered what Congressman Kirk told to the students of New Trier last week when he came to speak, “Vote for the person, not the party”. These girls who supported Dan Seals in the New Trier mock election, only supported him based on his party, and paid no attention to the fact that Mark Kirk, the republican candidate, actually has several liberal viewpoints. He is pro-choice and supports gay rights, and is endorsed by several democratic newspapers and magazines because of these viewpoints. These girls did the opposite of what Mark Kirk advised, and cast their ballots for the party, paying no attention to what the person had to say. This scenario made me wonder if people across the nation voted for president the same way these girls voted for the Congressman of Illinois.

I completed some research regarding this subject, and found a YouTube video, in which an interviewer interviewed African Americans across the country, while attributing McCain’s views to Obama. The interviewer asked these civilians if they agreed with Obama’s viewpoints, which were in actuality McCain’s. In all three examples that the video provided, the people getting interviewed said that they fully agree with Obama’s viewpoints, which were actually viewpoints that McCain fully supports, and Obama is completely against. While this video may have edited out interviews that did not work to prove the video’s point, I still find it a bit scary that people across the country may have voted for Obama even if they had no idea who or what he supports. People that did not study his viewpoints may have voted for him based on the Democratic Party he represents, because they wanted to make history, or because people want change, even if they are unaware of what change is.

Aside from voting for Obama, I am sure that a large amount of people voted for McCain that were unaware of his views are. People being unaware of what their chosen candidate supports has probably happened in several elections in the past, and will inevitably continue to happen in the future. However, I admittedly idealistically, hope that in future elections people attempt to see all sides of each issue, and vote for the candidate based on the their views, and ideas, instead of their party, race, or gender. However, for the time being, America needs to do exactly what McCain suggested in his speech after the election, serve the country, come together, and serve our newly elected president, Barack Obama.