Election Ed Lesson Five: final voting considerations

Written by Rachele Terranova, Graphics by Nadia Nugent

Welcome to the final lesson of Election Ed! I will be closing out with exploring the most pressing and socially relevant issues to consider going into tomorrow’s election based off of current events of the past year and time relevant legislation.

Before I get into those topics, I want to talk about election vocabulary. There are many terms you may not know circulating in the news, online sources and even on instagram. In order for you to use what you’re reading in the most useful way, it’s going to be crucial to understand all the terms youre reading.

Most commonly used:

POTUS

President of the United States

IMPOTUS

Impeached President of the United States — used most commonly with Donald Trump following his impeachment trial

SCOTUS

Supreme Court of the United States

GOP

Grand Old Party — another term for the Republican party

Occasionally used

RNC (2)

Republican National Committee — organization that represents and governs this party

Republican National Convention — presidential nominating convention every four years

DNC (2)

Democratic National Committee — organization that represents and governs this party

Democratic National Convention — presidential nominating convention every four years

Hardly used

FLOTUS

First Lady of the United States

VPOTUS

Vice President of the United States

COTUS

Constitution of the United States

Climate crisis

Worldwide environmental disaster has been at the forefront of a particularly eventful year. West coast wildfires, hurricane flooding and melting glaciers threatening to raise sea levels. In light of these events, candidates offer starkly different approaches to handling the climate crisis.

It’s important to listen to the science behind the climate crisis. Returning to the Paris Climate Agreement, which the current POTUS pulled out from is crucial for the future of global unity against climate change. Additionally, in the current presidency the U.S. has rolled back more than 100 hundred environmental rules to help fight the crisis. If America’s current stance in the fight for environmental justice persists, there will be higher levels of warming to combat in the upcoming years causing irreversible damage.

Racial injustice

Spring 2020 echoes the names George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. Countless before and many since then, the number of Black people killed senselessly by police are unceasing. Following the summer of unrest and the fight for racial justice through the Black Lives Matter movement, these issues have been and will continue to be at the forefront of the minds of voters. Racial injustice is a matter of health care, access to employment, media representation, finances and the wealth disparities.

Joe Biden has outwardly proven a stance on diversifying the workplace with Kamala Harris as his running mate. He has proposed Build Back Better under which he proposes “investments in opportunity zones, infrastructure, housing and homeownership, energy, education.”

Trump too has a plan called the Platinum Plan which “includes investment in areas that will support economic opportunity for Black Americans, like homeownership and job creation.” That being said, his administration overturned the Affirmatively Furthering Fair housing rule and made a policy ending diversity training for federal employees.

Women’s rights

One hundred years ago women won the right to vote through the ratification of the 19th Amendment — this election is a particularly important one for us to exercise this rights. Roe v. Wade has been a big topic of conversation especially during the election season.

President Trump is vocally pro-life and has hoped to overturn the aforementioned legislation since prior to his election. He has also passed legislation to allow health care providers to refuse abortion services for religious reasons which is widely approved by pro-life supporters. Most abortion services are also barred from federal funding under the Hyde Amendment.

In Biden’s plan, he hopes to restore federal funding to Planned Parenthood and is pro-choice in order to preserve the health of at risk mothers. He plans to stop TRAP laws which limit access to abortions. Ending the Hyde Amendment is also within the framework of Biden’s plan.

With the historic recent confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Democrats have been forcefully against this with the election so close to the confirmation date. On the other hand, Republicans are very in favor. She is historically pro-life / anti-abortion as well.

LGBTQ+ issues

If you are not a member of the LGBTQ+ community yourself, allyship is required in this election. Over the past two years we have seen protections for transgender students rescinded, the banning of transgender people from serving in the military, and LGBTQ+ rights no longer existing on the White House website. POTUS does bill himself as the most pro-LGBTQ+ president in history though his Department of Justice filed a brief with the SCOTUS endorsing that LGBTQ+ people can be fired by employers for being just that.

Wage gap and pay inequality

Three men currently own as much as the bottom half of all Americans. The biggest factor for wage inequality is the way wealth is distributed. CEOs continue to see pay increases while the average family is seeing the opposite. This is in course in favor of the one percent who are seeing the greatest reduction in tax rates since the 1960s.

Trump has stated he plans to preserve the tax cuts made over the past four years which cuts corporate taxes and benefits the wealthy. Biden plans to restore the tax rates of the Obama era which is on households making more than $400,000 but also limits top earning deductibles.