Know
The principle of voting itself is fundamental to any democratic society. I chose this topic because the relevance of correct and fair elections is very high nowadays. In my experience, every citizen of a democratic country considers the right to vote an inviolable right and obligation. The lens of social sciences is most relevant since society is partly structured based on voting. Together, members of society determine their further way of development and functioning as a single nation.
I know that the transition to free voting was challenging from a historical point of view. Women and ethnic minorities were greatly restricted in their rights, and it took a long time before the situation began to correct itself. Applying the lens of the humanities helps in the process of raising questions about this social process. They can be expressed as artistic actions or other expressions of human feeling for one purpose: emphasizing the importance of human voting rights.
Applying the lens of the natural sciences, however, can help to use statistics and the processing of data connected to any election to determine society’s primary goals, wishes, and preferences. In this case, I know that the natural sciences, with their limited relation to the social sphere, are responsible for determining outcomes and their causes. It is possible to apply their basic concepts to understand the internal processes of voting.
Want to Know
Social science reveals one of the main issues – how is it possible to increase the diversity of the voting population? It directly relates to the struggle against race, gender, or ethnicity discrimination. Moreover, it is necessary to understand the impact of historical changes, especially the Voting Rights Act, on modernity through the lens of a historical perspective. To what extent can the act affect people’s participation in elections? Can practical conclusions be drawn from the past and applied to the future?
The lens of humanities draws our attention to the aspect of the perception of oneself as a voter – does it affect everyone? What are people willing to do to assert their right to vote, and are they willing to fight for it? Moreover, with the help of the more precise natural sciences, other questions can be formulated – what is the impact of media and technology on the voting process? Is it possible to expand the number of voters and reduce the pressure on them with a scientific approach?
Keywords: Voting Rights Act, diversity, minorities, voter suppression, election fraud, media poll, balloting.
Learned
The diversity of voters often suffers from bureaucracy or indirect discrimination. According to Yang, increasing the number of voters is possible, for example, by providing ballots in minority languages and simplifying documentation requirements (2019). Some poor people do not carry the necessary identity document or do not have access to ballots (Yang, 2019). Likewise, very important are trends to restore voting rights for felons – in some states, even probationers are denied the right to vote permanently.
My questions about the historical development of voting rights are answered by Moore’s source, which details the passage of the Voting Rights Act, its significance, and its implications. Based on the analysis, this act could be considered the most crucial piece of legislation defining minority voting rights (Moore, 2019). Together with the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, this act influenced establishing an equal society and still impacts the voting process (Moore, 2019). The study supposes that discrimination has always stalled progress and must be eradicated.
I learned about people’s readiness to assert their right to vote from the example of suffragettes in Britain. From the article by Wahl, I learned that people mainly comprehend the importance of their right to vote (2018). On the question of the influence of media and methods to expand and simplify voting, an excellent answer is provided in Orman’s article (2019). That answer should be online voting, which is only developing and is rejected by many experts (Orman, 2019). However, its popularization can be guaranteed with the further digitalization of society.
References
Moore, W. V. (2019). Voting rights act of 1965. In Salem Press Encyclopedia. Salem Press.
Orman, H. (2019). Online voting: We can do it! (We have to). Communications of the ACM, 62(9), 25-27.
Wahl, K. (2018). Purity and parity: The white dress of the suffrage movement in early twentieth-century Britain. In J. Faiers & M. W. Bulgarella (Eds.), Colors in Fashion (pp. 21-34). Bloomsbury.
Yang, E. (2019). Ensuring access to the ballot box. Insights on Law & Society, 20(1), 20-25. Web.