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THIRD PARTIES ENSURE

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Above: Obama co-campaign manager Chris Mortimer (middle) and fellow supporters cheer on their candidate's victory. Below: Student coordinator Julia Remes looks on as balloons fall from the top of Western Hall Monday evening upon the announcement that Democrat Barack Obama and his running mate John Edward have won the mock election.

T H E ROAD TO T H E WHITE HOUSE STARTS AT WESTERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY

NEWSnt CIS M O C K PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION N O V E M B E R 7 , 2 0 0 7 ISSUE 5

HAIL TO THE CHIEF Obama/Edwards ticket tallies more than 500

Electoral College votes to claim mock presidency By Zachary Baker Many students, faculty and other per-

tinent staff gathered in Western Hall on Monday evening to elect a new president, or at least a pretend president, but it was Barack Obama who earned a whopping 506 of the 538 votes needed to become the new president of the United States.

Jessie Kallman, the campaign manager for Barack Obama, displayed pure confidence prior to the Electoral College began voting. "I think Obama is pretty likely to win," Kallman said. She said this mock election has been a great campaign opportunity.

"I'm ready to go to bed, but celebrate with a victory party beforehand," Kallman said. She added that their campaign team was ready for the nation "to have some change."

Change was what the Obama campaign got, but Republicans felt they had a good chance to win the presidency.

"Even though I feel that this campus is more liberal, I think that since Giuliani is more modern, students might not want to go as far left as Obama," said Steve Steinert Chairman for the College of Republicans.

Brian Keller, VP Chairmen for the College of Republicans, felt good about his cam-paign but said there weren't sufficient candidates running that could challenge Obama.

"I feel confident, Republicans are seen as the underdog on campus, but Obama has won in a landslide because he didn't really have any strong candidates against him."

With a possibility of having a pro-Obama campus, the Giuliani campaign believes that they did hold some advantages over other party's candidates. "Reduced taxes, keeping taxes low, we offer strong and proven leadership. Rudy comes from a

large state with experience, and Obama is inexperienced," Keller said.

Though the Greens were not expecting a victory, they were hoping to switch some votes. Their main goal was to inform Western Illinois University students that third parties do exist. Western is a liberal campus, but many students do not fit in with the Republicans or Democrats. At a certain point, all ideas mesh together but the Green party is another option for them. The Green Party Convention on Thursday was a big success, and Erin McCarthy represent-ing California stated "I was excited about the response to Jared Ball's speech. The tape was a little fuzzy on Thursday, which was a disappointment, but I believe the message was well received." She also said she noticed that most people who attended Thursday were surprised to learn the stance on the second amendment, and she was thrilled that she got that point across because she feels it is very important. She also said "Most people think we are just Democrats, but we are not. We are separate."

Jeremy Arendt said, "This is a party for the true progressive person." It is also important to understand that Greens stand apart from all other parties because they do not accept corporate donations. A cam-paign probably takes $2 billion to run, so it's not to say that they don't have a dog in this fight because people will understand that this is a grassroot democracy."

Rob Casey said, "The majority of our campus has not heard the Greens side yet. We have no idea what to expect tonight, but we just hope for a good reaction from the speeches." He also talked about how it was hard to be there Thursday night because it was hard to get the message out.

... Obama continued on Page 3

NOVEMBER 7, 2 0 0 7 NEWS-MEISTER 2

NEWsmtMtv News-Meister is an independent student news service covering WIU and the Mock Political Convention and Electoral College Presidential Election in Fall 2007, available through Nov. 7 in print, e-mailed pdf, and online versions — http://news-meister.blogspot. com or http://newsmeisterrealtime. blogspot.com

Senior editors: Joe Lanane and Julie Lord Contributing editors: Zachary T. Baker, Chris Rogers, Jacob Ryan, Alan Sacasa, A.J. Self and Tyler Vogler. Contributing reporters: Robert Amaefule, Demeris Bagnell, Caitlin Barrett, Jason Bradley, Brandon Brown, David Bryant, Chris Dejonge, Shauna Fitzgerald, Tess Flint, Lisa Glaub, Christina Holt, Harrison Jones, Ken Jenke, Alex Johnson, Greg Kuhn, Ken Leiting, Jessica Manker, Ashley Manning, Kyle Moore, James Munger, Irene Niedzwiedz, Aundra Noblet, Derek Palmer, Lori Pankratz, Nicole Reed, Josh Simmons, Brandon Smith, Paige Stark, Merrill Stevens, Brittany Strickland, Floyd Wombacher, Jesse Wright, Sarah Zavala and Sarah Zeeck. Cartoonist: Art department instructor Jim Allen. Faculty coaches: Lisa Barr, Mark Butzow, Lisa Kernek and Bill Knight.

Printing costs for this all-volunteer effort are underwritten by grants from the Illinois Green Party, the McDonough County League of Women Voters, the West-Central Illinois Building and Construction Trades Council, and WIU's "Road to the White House" project.

Special thanks to the student-run Western Courier for sharing their space and equipment.

i-lH JS

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STATES1

r . . P R I M A R Y -

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Governing less is the key for Republicans By Steve Steinert President College Republicans Western Illinois University The Republican Party believes in a free

country with a free market. We believe that the best government is one that governs less.

We disagree with the Democratic Party on the issue of taxes. They believe in higher taxes to fund social welfare pro-grams, while we believe that the govern-ment must practice fiscal responsibility and allow individuals to keep more of the money they earn.

We believe in equal rights, equal justice and equal opportunity for all, regardless of race, creed, sex, age or disability. We believe the strength of our nation lies with the individual and that each person's dig-nity, freedom, ability and responsibility must be honored.

We believe in pro-life values. We believe

American tfjromcfe that every American shall keep his right to bear arms.

We believe in preserving the values that this country was founded on.

We believe that we need a secure border to help preserve a safe country. Although we support all immigrants, we want them to come to this great county through the proper legal channels.

We believe that America should stay on the offense on terrorism. We feel that the war in Iraq, although tough, is for the cause of providing Americans with the safety we need. We believe that if we cut and run now, it will be our grandchildren who will pay the price.

As the great Ronald Reagan once said, "The government's duty is to protect the people, not run their lives."

E v a l u a t i n g D e m o c r a t i c p l a t f o r m s progressive post Following are the national Democratic

Party's positions on these issues, presented in alphabetical order:

1. ABORTION: Choice is a fundamental, Constitutional right; Democrats support the right to choose - even if a mother cannot pay

2. BUDGET/ECONOMY: Government policy should encourage home ownership and affordable housing. Further, the deficit should be cut in half in the next few years. Democrats feel that Republicans create debt and Democrats create surpluses.

3. CIVIL RIGHTS: Democrats fight for the Equal Rights Amendment and equal employ-ment; we support affirmative action to correct past discrimination. We believe there should be zero tolerance for racial profiling. We feel that marriage should be a state issue and the federal government should not ban gay marriage.

4. CORPORATIONS: There should be trans-parency in corporate accounting and an end to corporate welfare; small businesses should receive tax credits and investment support.

5. CRIME: Crime should be fought with pre-vention and community police; punishments should be severe, including executions. In death-penalty cases, we believe DNA testing and post-conviction reviews are required.

6. DRUGS: Democrats want to fight drugs and the economic hopelessness that fuels it. Also, we want to dry up the demand for drugs through increased law enforcement and more treatment for users.

7. EDUCATION: We back charter schools

and accountability in public schools, but not vouchers; class sizes should be cut and facili-ties modernized.

8. ENERGY & OIL: The nation needs energy independence from repressive regimes, helped in part by developing renewable energy and efficient vehicles and investing in Earth-friend-ly technology and transportation.

9. ENVIRONMENT: It's not necessary to choose between the environment and the economy; open space and rail travel should be encouraged.

10. FAMILIES & CHILDREN: Child care should be improved and Head Start fully funded; the Family and Medical Leave Act should be expanded.

11. FOREIGN POLICY: We must work to close the gap between the richest and poor-est nations, help Russia develop democracy, improve human rights and control nukes; Cuban dictator Castro's regime should end, but Americans should be able to travel there.

12. FREE TRADE: Free trade with safeguards on labor, environment and other standards will benefit everyone.

13. GOVERNMENT REFORM: Accessible, independently auditable and accurate voting must be guaranteed.

14. GUN CONTROL: We should re-autho-rize the ban on assault weapons and close the gun-show loophole.

15. HEALTH CARE: Expand health-care coverage and cut health-care costs so every American has affordable health insurance.

16. HOMELAND SECURITY: The military should be equipped to cope with new threats and missions and should have better pay and benefits; we respect and honor veterans; we must safeguard nuclear materials and stop producing it.

17. IMMIGRATION: We support a path for undocumented aliens to earn U.S. citizenship; immigrants should be protected from exploita-tion by employers.

18. JOBS: We support protecting workers' right to organize into unions; good jobs sup-porting families build a strong country; the tax system should be changed to stop encouraging moving jobs to other nations.

19. PRINCIPLES & VALUES: Our vision for America - strong at home, respected abroad.

20. SOCIAL SECURITY: We oppose the privatization of Social Security and also rais-ing retirement age.

21. TAX REFORM: Taxes should be cut for working families and the middle class, not the wealthiest Americans.

22. TECHNOLOGY: Science must ahead of ideology in research and policymaking; every home should have Internet access.

23. WAR & PEACE: We demand a plan to "win the peace" in Iraq; focus on Afghanistan to avoid any revival of its being a terror-ist haven; we're committed to Israel and a Palestinian state.

24. WELFARE & POVERTY: To help the poor, raise both the minimum wage and the Earned Income Tax Credit.

Star Sentinel We need to change the

Electoral College (Note: The Electoral College is a peculiar aspect to U.S.

Presidential elections, giving voters unequal power, based on where they live. Although it usually becomes an issue only every four years - shortly after a Presidential election - a current movement called the National Popular Vote is gaining traction.

Legislative chambers in Illinois and 10 other states have endorsed National Popular Vote's plan, as have former members of Congress including Democrat Birch Bayh of Indiana, Republican Jake Garn of Utah, and Independent john Anderson of Illinois.

Recent polls show about 70% of Americans support the idea (see http://zvww.nationalpopularvote.com/ for details).

In the state of California, Republicans endorsed a pro-posed June 2008 ballot measure dividing that state's 55 Electors so that whichever candidate wins California would receive two votes, with the rest divided according to who wins each Congressional district. That's similar to a proposal by former Macomb Journal editor Stacey Creasy, now a Regional News Manager for GateHouse Media, Inc., which owns most newspapers in west-central Illinois.)

By Stacey Creasy We need to make some changes when it

comes to the Presidential election. I believe it is a shame that in 2000 former Vice

President A1 Gore ended the night with more thanl million votes more than Republican George W. Bush but lost the election due to the outdated Electoral College.

There was a time when we needed the Electoral College in order to collect the nation-wide vote.

With the technology we have today, those days are gone. The Electoral College is no longer needed. We have the technology to count every vote cast for president from coast to coast.

However, we Americans love our traditions almost as much as we enjoy our technology.

Still, there are changes we can make in which the Electoral College will remain intact, and will be more accurate when it comes to the popular vote.

Allow each Congressional district to count as one vote with the Electoral College.

The rules of the Electoral College have not changed since its inception.

Each state has a certain number of votes in the Electoral College, based on the population there. The number of electoral votes of each state is the sum of its number of U.S. Senators (always two) and its U.S. Representatives (based on population).

The Electoral College has a winner-takes-all rule. For example, if one Presidential candidate defeats the other candidate by one vote in Illinois, the winning candidate picks up all 21 Electoral College votes even though almost half of the vot-ers here cast ballots for the other candidate.

By making the change to each Congressional District counting as an Electoral College vote, we will prevent the type of problem we wit-nessed in 2000.

With the change, if one candidate wins 16 Illinois districts and their opponent takes the other districts, one candidate would receive 16 Electoral College votes while the other picks up 5 Electoral College votes.

We still have the two Senators. To stick with a portion of the tradition, we could give those two votes to the winner.

This will make the process more accurate without tossing the whole tradition out the window.

With today's technology, we do not need the Electoral College. We can count every ballot cast in the United States and have the results in a matter of hours.

With the technology we have, it would be a crime for someone to win the popular vote, but not be elected to office.

3 NEWS-MEISTER N O V E M B E R 7 , 2 0 0 7

Third parties communicate message despite defeat

AJ SELF

Campus Greens President Rob Casey speaks on behalf of candidate Jared Ball at Monday evening's event.

By Danielle Granato and Derek P. Palmer The two active third parties at WIU

weren't expecting an Electoral College vic-tory, but they wanted to communicate some of the positions so students realize that they agree with their platforms.

The Green Party sees itself as a viable option.

California Green delegate Erin McCarthy said, "I was excited about the response to [Green Presidential nominee] Jared Ball's speech. The tape was a little fuzzy on Thursday, which was a disappointment, but I believe the message was well-received."

Campus Greens president Rob Casey said there's still work to do.

"The majority of our campus has not heard the Greens side yet," he said.

McCarthy said Greens are more than environmentally conscious Democrats.

"We are separate," McCarthy added. Another Green activist said he thought

the MPE was a good outreach effort. "This is a party for the true progressive

person," said Jeremy Arendt, who added that he was pleased at the MPE because many people had never heard of the Green Party before, and "maybe they were Greens all along but just didn't know it."

Similarly separate, the Libertarians say that they aimed at promoting awareness to the Libertarian cause, and felt pretty suc-cessful.

Most Americans and most students sup-port their positions, said Joshua Carrigan, president of College Libertarians. However, he conceded that some students may not have understood all aspects of supporting the Libertarian Party.

Thursday's Libertarian keynote speaker, Adam Chacksfield, agreed that there was a significant Libertarian presence in terms of what students believe.

The Libertarians would have received a decent amount of votes if the Green Party were not an equal presence in the cam-paign, said Carrigan, predicting that they'd split about 10-15 percent of the vote.

Josh Carrigan, manager for the Ron Paul campaign, speaks on his behalf Monday evening.

Members of die McDonough County chapter of the League of Women Voters collects ballot boxes in order to determine die conclusion of the two-and-a-half week Presidential Mock Election. The chapter took part in all the events during the MPE, volunteering both dieir time and energy to help make everything possible.

Mock election counts on LWV to keep voting fair By Brittany Strickland In regular elections ballots are counted

by government officials, but in mock elec-tions they call in others, and Western's MPE tapped a special group: the League of Women Voters.

The McDonough County League of Women Voters this week was in charge of counting votes and much more. Around for about 50 years, the group is non-partisan and is affili-ated with the state and national leagues.

They advocate for important policies, work year around, and surprising bit of information is that you don't have to be a

... Obama continued from Page 1 "First of all, the tape was fuzzy, and

second of all, the room was filled with people who didn't want to be there." He was pleased at the end of the evening because he realized that many people had never heard of the Green Party before, and "maybe they were Greens all along but just didn't know it."

The Libertarians emphasized just a couple of simple policies. The first is the principle of non-aggression. Because of their belief in the non-aggression principle, they favor withdrawal of troops from Iraq and abol-ishment of death penalty; they support the rights of individuals to bear arms, strongly

woman to be a member. In the Macomb area alone they have six men as members. The group just hasn't changed its name yet.

Sally Egler, vice presi-dent of McDonough's LWV chapter, has been an active member for

M • * £ T W 15 years, fc ^ "We educate people EGLER o n candidates and all L W V issues," she said. "Our

mission is to educate

favor of the use of marijuana for medical and recreational use; and they believe in free market principles of capitalism and are against government interference such as a universal health care.

They also oppose increases in the mini-mum wage.

Dean Inessa Levi of the College of Arts and Sciences also was a guest speaker Monday night. Levi grew up in the for-mer Soviet Union, and she said the term mock election would have a much differ-ent meaning in the once-Communist state.

"It would have been used to character-ize the nature of the electoral process in the USSR whereby a slate of communist

voters about important political issues." A former high school teacher, she said the

group every year publishes a voter's guide, containing candidates' answers to citizens' questions.

The MPE isn't even the group's biggest event of the year. The LWV hosts candi-date forums for local, county and state races, said Egler, who described local LWV members a dedicated, eager to help, and an important factor in educat-ing people on candidates and issues, and encouraging people to vote and make a difference.

party candidates were swept into office by a nearly unanimous vote because that was the only slate available," Levi said-

Levi said that the Mock Presidential Election here at WIU has benefited the university as a whole.

"Today we gather not only to learn about the democratic process, but to celebrate it. Over the past two weeks, it has been a true pleasure to see students, faculty and staff from across WIU come together in a spirit of discovery to conduct this mass simulation."

— Sarah Zeeck, Ashley Manning, Irene Niedzwiedz and Christina Holt

contributed to this report.

By Caitlin Barrett Illinois State Sen. John Sullivan took the

stage at the final session of WIU's simu-lated presidential election and suggested that weighty matters lay ahead.

"This election, now, is in your hands." Sullivan appeared on stage before about 500 delegates of the 50 states representing the U.S. Electoral College cast their votes. The rest of the crowd of approximately 2,500 students, however, seemed not to grasp the importance of their roles. They seemed less than eager to be at this ses-sion.

Speakers from the stage repeatedly asked "Are you guys awake out there?"

Perhaps the lack of enthusiasm was due to the fact that it was the first night some of the delegates attended the mock elec-tion, having been persuaded to attend within the last few days. Or perhaps it is because of a widespread lack of knowl-edge about the institution known as the Electoral College. Whatever the cause, the result was students acting as delegates without much of a clue.

"I was excited because the I.D. badge I was given says 'LA' because I thought it was Los Angeles," an unnamed delegate from Louisiana said. "I didn't know that it was just states being represented."

While this lack of understanding is somewhat discouraging, it is also under-standable. The Electoral College has long been shrouded in mystery. By definition, it is the body that formally chooses the president and vice president of the United States. It consists of 538 electors (one for each of the 435 members of the House of Representatives and 100 Senators; and 3 for the District of Columbia).

If no presidential candidate wins a major-ity of electoral votes (260 out of the 538 votes), the presidential election is decided by the House of Representatives.

The House would select the president by majority vote, choosing from the three candidates who received the greatest number of electoral votes. The vote would be taken by state, with each state delega-tion having one vote.

If no vice presidential candidate wins a majority of electoral votes, the Senate would select the vice president by major-ity vote, with each Senator choosing from the two candidates who received the greatest number of electoral votes.

How exactly does the

Electoral College work?

NEWS-MEISTER N O V E M B E R 7 , 2 0 0 7

By Sarah Zeeck After Barack Obama was announced as

president at Western Illinois University's Mock Election, a rush of students filed out the doors and on with their lives.

Behind, in Western Hall, they left a waste-land of unused ballots, fliers, limp banners, battered campaign signs, and most of the thousands of balloons that the flier prom-ised would drop after the presidency was announced. However, these notions did not appear in Western hall of their own volition, and they certainly did not clean after themselves.

A work force of people who came early and stayed late helped to make the Grand Ballroom, the Lamoine Room and Western Hall the overwhelming display of patrio-tism they were as delegates, campaign managers, and other members of the pub-lic attended the five-night convention.

One student volunteer, Jared Reed, has helped each night of the convention.

"Today, we got here at 7" a.m., Reed said Monday, "so we basically have been spending all day every day setting up." He added that he thought they would be there until approximately 9:45 p.ny tearing down.

For Westec's Assistant Technology Director, Mark Behymer, the days and nights were just as long.

"I have been here every night of the mock election starting at 8 a.m. usually every day and leaving at 10 p.m. most of the time," he said. "It has made me tired."

The latest Behymer said he and his crew were there tearing down was 12:30 a.m. That was when we had to totally switch over between the first and second nights,

ADAMSACASA

the thousands of balloons. She, along with some other students, used anything sharp they could find to pop the balloons one had a mechanical pencil and others had car keys.

"We try to pick up a lot of the fliers," Smith added. "There were some people picking up the fliers for recycling."

Now that the mock convention is over, and Western Hall will no longer contain the traces of the mock convention, those who spent long hours setting up and tearing will maybe get some well deserved sleep.

experience doing tech work. Luckily, I have two tech directors that know quite a bit and help me out a lot."

Another student volunteer at the conven-tion tried to help on all fronts possible. Rose Smith said she was in professor John Hemingway's class when he requested assis-tance from his students for the mock elec-tion.

"I just show up and somebody will say go man that table, so I will," Smith said as she used an open pair of scissors to pop some of

he added. Assistant production manager for Westec,

Trevor Mitchell, said they had to help with everything from sound to lights.

"We used a podium mic for the delegates and we played the CDs and stuff for the music in between."

Mitchell added that the most difficult part was when something goes wrong.

"You have to figure out what it is and how to fix it quickly on the go," he said. "Especially as a student, I don't have a lot of

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