Gabriela Bofill- Reflection #2

     I would like to start by thanking our team leader Valentina. She has definitely been a great support for us as a group. She helped us make the pamphlet that was given to other students and teachers at the time of the outdoor presentation.I would also like to talk about the experience we had when we did a live presentation. I must say that I was quite nervous, it was a new emotion and in a way a very good way to overcome my fear of public speaking.

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    From my group's presentation, I was able to learn through my research about the origin of the electoral college and elections. As I said in my presentation, elections do not have an exact point of origin but the roots of the electoral process can be found mainly in ancient Rome and Greece. Many governments were hereditary rather than elected, as was the case in the Middle Ages, in the feudal system. But in smaller towns, assemblies and town councils were introduced to increase the participation of all the people in the town. Government was created largely because people needed solutions to different problems such as representation, legitimacy, protection of people's rights, accountability, social change, stability and order, voice in the governance, impact on future generations, and promoting democracy.Technology has also had a major influence on the electoral process. It exposes corruption and misconduct, facilitates public debate and provides information to citizens. But the most important thing is that the media remains accountable and ensures transparency.We also learned during our presentation about the importance of voting and how it honors the sacrifice made by those who fought for us. Voting is a responsibility, it strengthens democracy and in my opinion, if we have demanded this for so long as a right, now that we have it, we should appreciate it.The consequences of not voting could be less representation, loss of individual voices, imbalance of power, and we may lose the opportunity to influence for something better. By voting we protect democracy by maintaining stability, we have diverse representation, we prevent corruption, and it is also a civic responsibility. The electoral college has associations and organizations similar to it. At the national level there is the FEC, LWV, Common Cause, ACLU, NACCP. At the local and state level there are State Election Boards/Commission, County/City Election Office, FairVote, Political Action Committees (PACs) and super PACs. oter Education has Community Outreach, Language Assistance and Cultural Inclusion, Information Distribution. Voter Registration comes with Registration Drives, Assistance with Forms and Online Registration, Ensuring Accessibility. National organizations influence Policies and Reforms in different ways such as, Advocacy and Lobbying, Legal Action, Public Education and Outreach, Monitoring and Reporting, Research and Data. Most importantly, there are also organizations that monitor the fairness of the electoral process: the Election Protection Coalition, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the Carter Center and the League of Women Voters. We can also see how countries that are clearly communist like North Korea, Cuba, and Venezuela. Clearly these countries declare themselves democrats but simply if for example in North Korea if you do not vote for Kim Jung Un apart from the fact that it has to be mandatory if you do not do it they can end up killing you and even your family and friends can face horrible consequences for your not having voted.

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    From the presentation of group 4 we were able to appreciate several things. One of these was the problems that are going through the elections of this year, school fundings, and student loans. They talked about the No Child Left Behind Act, Every Student Succeeds Act. They talked about national and local organizations. National organizations are broader and set standards for education. Local organizations are more focused on a local school or district.Access to education is different in every country. During Pandemic about 10% of students lacked adequate technology for remote learning in the United States. Finland and Germany launched similar initiatives to provide digital devices and subsidized internet access. Brazil 3 million of students had many problems accessing education during the pandemic. They also talked about how the Republican Party viewed this problem with education. Republicans support school choice, believe parents should have more control over where their children live. Support state-led initiatives for teacher pay, testing, and curriculum decisions.

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    Immigration Policies Group 1. Thanks to the group research we were able to learn that in the United States there are around 36.9 million (77%) of lawful immigrants, nationalized citizens there are around 23.4 million (49%), permanent residents 11.5 million (24%), and unauthorized immigrants there are 11.0 million (23%). Many of the immigrants in the United States are made up of investigations of Mexicans, people from India, China, Cuba, etc. They talked about what each political party supports. Democrats support Path to Citizenship, Family Reunification, Refugee and Asylum, Policies, Border Security, Economic Contributions. Republicans support, Border Security, Deportations, Legal Immigration, Employment Verification, Refugee and Asylum, Policies. 

    Gender Equality Group 2. They started talking about employee income. Women had an 83.6 % Median Weekly Earnings in 2023. Architecture, Engineering, Computer, are Mathematics hold highest weekly earnings, Income differences ranged from $1,000-$2,500. They also talked about abortion and women's right to choose. This has actually been one of the biggest debates of the 2024 elections, well in fact it started in 2022. Pro-life supporters simply do not want to see unborn babies destroyed, and this election is very important to them. According to Ron DeSantis under his watch, a ban on abortions after six weeks was signed into law in Florida. Unlike Democrats who want to make abortion easier to get, pro-life people think that with the right leaders they could protect both moms and babies. The reasons found for being pro-life are Value of Life, Human Rights, Scientific Evidence, Support for Women. Instead of abortion there may be other solutions such as adoption, Parenting Assistance, Counseling facilities.

    After all the presentations and all the research made by each group im definitely grateful for all the knowledge. Everything that was research was a great implement to my knowledge and I also have to say that it definitely helped me to get to know better about this topics. So thank you to all the groups, project managers, and profesor Sinkoff. 

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