Voting Strategically

Voting Strategically

What is split-ticket voting? And why people who vote for one party in presidential election vote for another party in congressional election in the United States?

Regarding this question first of all we should define split-ticket voting.

Split-ticket voting refers to differences in partisan choices made by the same voter at simultaneous elections for more than one office.

 Multiple vote system widen voter’s choice because they can, if they wish vote for more than one party. In American phrase they can “split their ticket”. Various kinds of split-ticket voting are made possible by presidential election, bicameral legislatures, mixed-member electoral system, and multi-level governance. Where government is split between two separately elected Houses, or between directly elected executive (usually president) and legislatures, voters will often cast two or more votes simultaneously, as occur in the Unites States.

Some reasons are listed below:

As the voting population gets older, they will be replaced with voters with far fewer attachments to parties. Candidates will face voters less and less likely to vote regularly for one party. The consequence of this shift is rise in split-ticket voting.

Some times voters are attracted by the candidate of another party, so he or she against his or her vote for his or her party decides to vote for another party.

As Americans have moderate views on political matter if the power of presidency (imperial presidency) increase the rate of split-ticket voting will increase too. Actually split-ticket voting makes a balance in division of powers.

I think voters wish to balance competing offices by split-ticket voting or in other words voting for different parties in each election.

Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003

"Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003"

 

The development of Norway's abortion policy illustrates the political process that is activated when demands based on feminist ideology are directed toward a structure organized around socioeconomic cleavages. Both cooptation and a perversion of subject matter were used to exclude feminist ideas from abortion politics since 1915. In the 1921-68 period, women's organizations played a minor role in abortion politics; the medical profession and the Labor Party were the 2 major participants. In 1978, the new women's liberation movement succeeded in removing the abortion issue from the routine decision-making process. Abortion became defined as a matter of politics and ideological controversy as a result of a weakening of the political and institutional relations in Norway during the 1970s. The contribution of the women's movement involved both the maintenance of the abortion issue on the political agenda and the acceptance of the definition of abortion as part of emancipation policy. In confronting state policy-making structures, the women's liberation movement formed a bloc with political parties such as the Christian People's Party and the Socialist Left-Wing Party. Overall, the Norwegian decision-making process with regard to abortion shows how an established structure, organized in accordance with one cleavage, can weaken and disorganize other cross-cutting cleavages. (www.popline.org/docs/0786/045094.html)

The Act, introduced in the first session of the 108th Congress (2003-2004), outlaws a specific late-term abortion procedure referred to as intact dilation and extraction by the American Medical Association; the Act does not refer to such a medical procedure by name, instead using the legal term coined by a pro-life politician in 1995, "partial birth abortion." The medical procedure of intact dilation and extraction, where the fetus is removed intact, is considered by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists as the "safest and offers significant benefits for women suffering from certain conditions that make the potential complications of non-intact D&E especially dangerous."Opponents to the procedure point to the method further, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, the lower limits of fetal viability (which is the ability of the fetus to survive outside of the womb) at around 22-23 weeks, which occurs in the middle of the second trimester (weeks 18-26) when the procedure is traditionally used. While there is an exemption if a woman's life is at risk, objections to this statute are primarily because there is no exemption if the health of a woman is at risk. ^{As prescribed by the act, "any physician who, in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, knowingly performs a partial-birth abortion and thereby kills a human fetus shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 2 years, or both." The Act passed both chambers of the 108th Congress and was signed in to law on November 5, 2003.}

House: H.R.760 was introduced by Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) on February 13, 2003. It was immediately referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary, of which Chabot was a member. The Committee reported on the bill on April 3, 2003, and was put to vote on June 4, 2003. H.R.760 passed with a vote of 282-139. It was tabled later that day in favor of conference on S.3 in the Senate, which had passed earlier in March.

Senate: .3 was introduced by Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) on February 14, 2003. Sen. Barbara Boxer’s (D-Calif.) motion to commit the bill to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary on March 12, 2003 failed. The bill was subsequently put to a vote on March 13, 2003 where it passed with a vote of 64-33. This version of the bill later went on to conference. The Act passed both chambers of the 108th Congress and was signed in to law on November 5, 2003.

Conference and passage:

On September 22, 2003, the Senate designated Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Mike DeWine (R-Ohio), Rick Santorum (R-Pa.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) as conferees. On September 25, 2003, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) appointed Reps. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) and Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) as conferees. The Conference Report was filed on September 30, 2003.

House: The House voted on October 2, 2003, with a vote of 281-142 on the passage of the report.

President: On November 5, 2003, the President signed it and it became Public Law No: 108-105.

Supreme Court challenge:

The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act was signed into law by President George W. Bush on November 5, 2003, and was immediately challenged. Three U.S. district courts, the Northern District of California, Southern District of New York, and the District of Nebraska declared the law unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf in Nebraska found the law unconstitutional in ‘’Carhart v. Ashcroft’’. The federal government appealed the district court ruling, bringing Carhart v. Gonzales before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. The panel unanimously upheld the ruling of the Nebraska court on July 8, 2005. Finding that the government offered no "new evidence which would serve to distinguish this record from the record reviewed by the Supreme Court in Stenberg," they held that the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act is unconstitutional because it lacks an exception for the health of the woman.. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to review the Eighth Circuit decision on September 25, 2005. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the Carhart case on February 21, 2006. The Supreme Court's five-to-four decision, which was handed down on April 18, 2007, upheld the federal ban as not imposing an undue burden on the due process right of women to obtain an abortion, "under precedents we here assume to be controlling," such as the Court's prior decisions in Roe v. Wade and related cases. The law does not ban abortions, but rather the

Procedure generally used in the second trimester of pregnancy. Justice Kennedy delivered the majority opinion, while Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented contending that the ruling ignored Supreme Court abortion precedent. Justice Ginsburg sought to ground the Court's abortion jurisprudence based on concepts of personal autonomy and equal citizenship rather than the Court's previous privacy approach: "Thus, legal challenges to undue restrictions on abortion procedures do not seek to vindicate some generalized notion of privacy; rather, they center on a woman's autonomy to determine her life's course, and thus to enjoy equal citizenship stature.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Partial-Birth_Abortion_Ban_Act_of_2003#_note-0

Constitution

Objections to Constitution by GEORGE MASON (1725-1792)

 

1-In the House of Representatives, there is not the Substance, but the Shadow only of Representation; which can never produce proper Information in the Legislature, or inspire Confidence in the People;

2- The Judiciary of the United States is so constructed & extended, as to absorb and destroy the Judiciarys of the several States;

3-The President of the United States has the unrestrained Power of granting Pardons for Treason;

4-There is no Declaration of any kind, for preserving the Liberty of the Press, or the Tryal by Jury in Civil Causes; nor against the Danger of standing Armys in time of Peace.

5-The Senate have the Power of altering all money Bills, and of originating appropriations of money, & the Sallerys of the Officers of their own Appointment, in Conjunction with the president of the United States;

6-There is no Declaration of Rights, and the Laws of the general Government being paramount to the Laws & Constitutions of the several States, the Declarations of Rights in the separate States are no Security. Nor are the People secured even in the Enjoyment of the Benefits of the common Law.

7-Equal representaion of small and large states in the senate.

8- the short term of representatives and their moral supersession during a part of even short term by the election of their successor.

9-the lack of leadership and and organization in the House.

10-the sepration of executive and legislative powers.