Sean O¶Donnell

Politicians and their schemes

It is an obvious fact that winning elections gets a potential politician to his or her desired

position. In order to even get a chance in winning an election, a potential politician must sway

the public to get more votes using any possible means. Politicians will try to expand their

messages through multiple Medias such as television, the internet, and magazines to win political

favor, or in an unstable country, use bribery and other forms of corruption to get more votes.

Some politicians will use social media networks in order to promote their campaign or

perform an attack on an opposing campaign. For example, in the recent election for senate held

in order to replace the seat left by the late Ted Kennedy, the American Future Fund, a group of

conservatives, launched an anti-Martha Coakley campaign by using Twitter1. This campaign

consisted of multiple fake Twitter accounts set up to coax other members of the Twitter

community into not voting for Martha Coakley. Although these fake accounts were terminated

by Twitter, it was estimated that around 60,000 people came across the messages that the

American Future Fund wanted to spread. This decision to use a popular social-networking site

was a wise one, since it had a great impact on the post-Ted Kennedy senator election. Aside from

attacks, the use of social networking sites also helped potential politicians to earn the trust of

many members of those social networking sites. Barack Obama made a MySpace account for

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himself in order to promote his presidential campaign, which has benefitted him greatly2. The

MySpace account has achieved fame relative to many of the popular bands, comedians, and other

miscellaneous celebrities that own and maintain their own MySpace profiles. Maintaining a

MySpace profile not only helped Obama with reaching out to young people, who currently

dominate the internet, but it also gave him the opportunity to answer any questions that his

³friends´ on MySpace had for him. Since the internet is hands-down one of the best ways to

communicate with other people and share information, politicians who took advantage of social

networking sites were at a great advantage over their rivals who did not even consider the

internet as a tool for getting votes.

Another way that politicians can manipulate elections is through Gerrymandering.

Gerrymandering is to divide an area into election districts to give one political party an electoral

majority in a large number of districts while concentrating the voting strength of the opposition

in as few districts as possible3. Gerrymandering helps political parties avoid conflicts with the

other party so that they can guarantee as many uncontested seats in Congress as possible4. Tools

like Gerrymandering offer votes from the people that it targets without arousing suspicion from

voters since the term ³Gerrymandering´ along with many other political terms are usually only

known by those who are active in politics.

Quite possibly the best, yet most risky way of winning a political position is through

corruption. While corruption tactics can work greatly, they can backfire, causing damage to the

reputation of the potential (and most likely dangerous) politician. Examples of corruption tactics

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include bribery, assassinations, bombings, and other activities considered illegal in most if not all

places around the world. Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela, and his political party were

accused of bribing key people for deciding the new National Parliament of Venezuela5. America

Arrieta, who is against the Chavez party, was bribed with a refrigerator and a washing machine

in hopes that her vote would sway to her enemy¶s side. In Kenya, one of the many unstable

countries in Africa, there have been political parties who have literally been buying their votes

from voters6. Although bribery can be a sure way to get votes, it does not help a society choose a

leader that is best for their country, and can be severely punishable depending on the location of

the crime.

Politicians have always been trying to sway the minds of people in order to get their

votes. Whether or not their reason for wanting political power is justified, politicians must use

manipulation techniques in elections, or else their enemies may beat them by manipulating votes.

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