SPECIMEN THREE
Shahzada Yaqoot
Grand Canyon University:
Eng-365
June 4, 2023.
Charyse Allan
GOP Candidates Must Have 40,000 Donors And Poll At 1% To Make the First Debate Stage
America is setting up the stage for the presidential elections of 2024. It's an event that Americans go through every four years in electing or reelecting the commander in chief of their country. As a result, journalists representing various publications have started to sharpen their pens to cover every step of the election process, ensuring nothing goes amiss. The following 18 months of political campaigning by the two major parties of America will bring its citizens a lot of information, political awareness, extra expenses, and entertainment of a unique nature. The curtain for the political drama is about to be lifted for the spectators to see how well their favorite election star will perform.
This election process is less taxing on the Democratic party this time. The incumbent president and his team will defend their office for their second term. But, of course, there will be other Democratic contestants who will challenge the present president. Still, history has shown that it is usually tricky to un-throne a sitting president by his party. However, the growing dissatisfaction among the democrats about the age-related health decline of the incumbent president is a substantial concern. Thus, Democratic contestants are gearing up for a showdown at the forthcoming elections.
The Republican party, on the other hand, is gearing up to take back the White House with a careful strategy. Chief among the contestants is former President Donald Trump, who did not accept the results of the 2020 elections. Instead, he was adamant that he had won the election and was being defrauded by the Democratic Party's well-devised plot to oust him from his presidency. In defending his office, he fought back fiercely through the court system and instigated his supporters to adopt unsophisticated protest methods. At the end, he had no choice but to pack up and go.
After fighting through multiple lawsuits for the last four years, President Trump has announced to run again in 2024 to win the White House again. But he is not alone; several other candidates, both old and new, are willing to take a shot at the U.S. presidency, the world's most influential and prestigious job position. To trigger their election campaigns, each candidate has to rely upon small donors who can collectively raise enough finances to support their candidate in meeting the election campaign expenses. These expenses that run into millions of dollars must be in place before the first debate scheduled for August of this year.
This year, the Republican National Committee (RNC) wants each contestant to prove a 40000-donor base. And at least 1% of good support. Candidates cannot participate in the first presidential debate if they fail to provide evidence of support (EOS) to the election commissioner at least one day before the discussion. Contestants like former President Trump, Gov. Chris Christie, Gov. Ron Desantis, and Biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy have proven to carry a donor base exceeding 40K.
An excellent presidential election campaign is estimated to cost between 100 to 150 million dollars. When analyzed, the cumulative expenditure of qualifying one candidate for the nomination alone can cost about a billion-dollar budget. When calculated for both parties, and taking into consideration the preparation, traveling, entertaining, printing marketing materials, making souvenirs, and mobilizing millions of helping hands around the country, it perhaps costs about five Billion dollars before one person emerges as a winner of the U.S. presidency for one term of four years.
Can there be a more straightforward process that can save the five-billion-dollar expenses and yet get the same results? I am sure with present-day technological advances; a method can be devised to do all campaigning digitally in a virtual environment. Electronic voting, counting, and verification can all be done by creating advanced election-handling software. Perhaps all voters can log into a central portal of their party, and select their candidate, ancillary candidates, and to vote according to their choice from the privacy of their homes.
Such eventual breakthroughs in election campaigning, nominating, voting, counting, monitoring, and tabulating results will result in saving much time and expenditure. The candidates may still carry a donor base, but instead of consuming millions of dollars in advertisements, traveling, and entertainment, the finances collected can be preserved in favor of the winner to be spent in a domestic project of the highest need. The us voters will admire their financial contribution going to a worthy cause, instead of being blown away in TV advertisements to sway opinions.
Such a radical change in election reforms requires bipartisan support in Washington. But before getting to that point, some software publishers must invest in research and development of a software model that can accurately handle the election process at each phase. Some similar platforms already exist in the entertainment industry. Creating a fail proof portal for the voters to log in, establish their identity through biometrics, getting double verified in real time, and voting from a private IP address, is all possible even with the present technology applications. All it needs is to fine tune it for precision.
Such advancement when achieved will align with other technologies that are forthcoming. Elections will continue to happen every four years, and the price of five billion dollars will keep escalating. The next 10 elections may cost as high as 100 billion dollars to the taxpayers. If proper changes are made now, this huge monetary expense can be avoided. The saved funds can then be utilized in other necessary projects that will have a long term impact for the US voters.
References.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/rnc-debate-rules_n_647a532ae4b091b09c32a9b9