{"id":81135,"date":"2024-09-18T09:45:18","date_gmt":"2024-09-18T14:45:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=81135"},"modified":"2024-09-18T09:47:15","modified_gmt":"2024-09-18T14:47:15","slug":"september-civic-engagement-speaker-series-begins-with-discussion-about-electoral-college","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/?p=81135","title":{"rendered":"September Civic Engagement Speaker Series begins with discussion about Electoral College"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By SETH HAMMES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tiger Media Network<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This week\u2019s Civic Engagement Speaker Series was hosted in the Memorial Union Cody Commons, giving it a more casual feel for a discussion-based lecture. Civil Learning Engagement, the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, and Us 4 U hosted FHSU Assistant Professor of Political Science, Jay Steinmetz, to bring forth the year\u2019s first speaking session, open to any and all students willing to show up and learn more about what the electoral college is, and how it may influence your decision to vote.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Steinmetz began Tuesday’s presentation by questioning if your vote does indeed matter in the Electoral College, prompting the direction the evenings discussion would go. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t write that title. I\u2019m a little pessimistic, about whether or not your vote matters,\u201d Steinmetz said before starting the lecture.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Steinmetz<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Steinmetz began the lecture by explaining how voting works inside the electoral college for each state. He explained how each state has its own laws, and that they run their own elections. While setting the tone for the lecture, Steinmetz also stated potential topics to elaborate on further in the Series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShould we have the Federal Government passing laws that guarantee certain rights to the elections, or that they make the elections more uniform across the country? That may be an important question to ask,\u201d he said.  \u201cStates pass their own laws and run their own elections as per the US constitution, we can talk a little about that. Is that a bad thing? Is that a good thing?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout the lecture, Steinmetz shared facts, statistics, statements, terminology, and even described tactics that candidates such as Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and Hilary Clinton used to get ahead in elections. A notable term he referred was the \u201cBlue Firewall,\u201d referring to the 18 states that consistently voted Democrat from 1992 to 2012.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJoe Biden also won Arizona and Nevada,\u201d Steinmetz said. \u201cSo, with Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia, he then reconstituted the Blue Firewall.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Steinmetz conveyed a lot of information, but he also added a few opinions and predictions of his own. He talked about an annual elections guide he writes, where he lays out certain factors of the election, following his \u201cvery famous presidential prediction with the electoral college.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPolitical scientists are horrible protectors of the future. We have no idea what\u2019s going to happen, and we are mostly wrong,\u201d he said. \u201cSo, take that with a grain of salt when I come out with my results.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Steinmetz touched on other matters, such as how slavery affected voting, and even indirectly answered a very important question: Does the electoral college work for us today?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere have only been three exceptions when the popular vote did not align with the electoral vote outcome,\u201d he said. \u201c[The] 1824, 1876 election, and what will become the compromise of 1877 and 1888 election. The point here is that those are the only three instances.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Steinmetz, the question of whether the Electoral College is the best system for selecting the president is as political and polarized as it’s ever been. Steinmetz inserted intervals for the audience to ask questions. Each question he was asked, served as another prompt for him to address the audience\u2019s interests more personally within the lecture. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One audience member asked about how future candidates would choose to campaign in the Electoral College system or in a popular vote system, specifically in states like Kansas who don\u2019t have many electoral votes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve heard that argument, and my response to this argument\u2026is I\u2019ve heard that if we went to a straight popular vote, that means that California, Texas, and the big popular states would not make elections, and those are the only places that candidates would go,\u201d Steinmetz said. \u201c I really am unsure about that, entirely. I don\u2019t think that is necessarily the case. I think that candidates would look at regions, and how demographic similarities would reflect regional interests in ways that might compel them to go to regions they would otherwise not go to in our current electoral college system. So, I could see a lot of candidates traveling to places, in fact Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska, because they would be thinking about this throughout the entire region.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The upcoming Speaker Series will be the from 6:30-9:30 p.m. on Tuesday in the Memorial Union Trails Room. Micah Kubic, the director of the ACLU of Kansas will be presenting on Strengthening Democracy in Kansas. More information can be found here.<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By SETH HAMMES Tiger Media Network This week\u2019s Civic Engagement Speaker Series was hosted in the Memorial Union Cody Commons, giving it a more casual… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":142,"featured_media":81138,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":false,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3397,3398,11],"tags":[15830,10584,12287,15767],"class_list":["post-81135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-area-news","category-campus-news","category-news","tag-civic-engagement-speaker-series","tag-electoral-college","tag-jay-steinmetz","tag-seth-hammes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tigermedianet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/Jay-Steinmetz-Civic-Engagement-Speaker-Series.jpg?fit=1182%2C645&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/142"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=81135"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81142,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81135\/revisions\/81142"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/81138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=81135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=81135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigermedianet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=81135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}