My group was Stephen Holts, Tenzin Ngawang, and Sasha Sapp, and myself. We picked our topic by saying the first thing that came to our heads. We did this because we didn't want to spend time arguing over the subject and wanted to get right on to doing the work. I personally decided to do one of the papers because I'm good at writing. This project was in accordance to one of our 11th grade Spanish "What is the role of an individual in creating and sustaining change?". This project to me was about educating the future voters and politicians of America. We did research to understand what changes could be made and why the general public might or might not support. We were making the core of a campaign and if we actually wanted to fight to let 16 year olds vote this is where we would start. My previous idea of how America worked was that they counted every vote that came from every citizen. That idea changed after I learned about the Electoral College and how it works. I think that America is still a Democracy it’s just “The lives of a lot are in the hands of a few” kind of democracy. One thing we did to try to make it more relatable to a general audience is by having a spokesperson or a face of our campaign “Kathleen”. Kathleen is a 16 year old and represents a mature educated portion of 16 year olds that want to vote. Other then that we did all four of the core parts and made a good functioning website.  

          

• My group and I  kind of collaborated our ideas, until we all agreed on one topic. This focus seems to be our main focus because I think we could of relate to it. 
  
  
• 11th grade Essential ? - What is the role of the individual in creating and sustaining change? 
  Everyone was given a responsible to get their part of the project done effectively, and the SLA core values seemed to fit will into the process of our individual work that we all provided into a finished completed project.
  
  
• How has your understanding of the electoral process and whether or not the US is a democracy evolved during this unit?
  My understanding has grown better about the whole electoral process. I have learned many things with this benchmark such as how the process of voting is done and how candidates are elected. 
  
  
• How did you decide to best relay a message to a national audience with your marketing campaign?
  My message to make to the audience was done through my campaign ad. Through my AD I tried to get the message out with a simple message and with creative colors and pictures to grab the attention of the audience.

• How did you group go about making a decision for what to focus on for the project?
  Our group focused on several of the points highlighted in the information on voter turnout. We found that several people of lower income and status chose not to vote. Their reasons for choosing not too were unknown but what was known is that voting is extremely important. We saw reports that other countries who had administered compulsory voting had a higher voting percentage then ours. That's why we decided to focus on compulsory voting. 
• 11th grade Essential ? - What is the role of the individual in creating and sustaining change?  The role of the individual is to create a successful environment which many can agree with and believe in. When creating change it is also important that the person is passionate and believes in their ideal. To sustain change the person must be persisten in their ventures for change. 
• How has your understanding of the electoral process and whether or not the US is a democracy evolved during this unit?
  It has changed because in my opinion, I feel that America is still a democracy but in a way these restrictions go back to civil rights times in the 60's. The government says that they're trying to prevent vouter fraud but there has been very few cases of voter fraud. It seems to me that they are attempting to keep certain groups from voting.  
• How did you decide to best relay a message to a national audience with your marketing campaign?
  We decided it would be best to make our video as interactive as possible and to engage people with our print-ad. We felt that it was best to try and make them as interesting as possible because it is important.

Rebuttal Paper - http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13041242/Final%20Rebuttal.pages

Group Page - https://sites.google.com/a/scienceleadership.org/weekendvotingact/

• How did you group go about making a decision for what to focus on for the project?
  - Well after coming up with a few options (all equally good), we cut the ones we felt were reoccurring around the class, and went with the least popular option. That being extending the voting days to one day during the weekdays, to the weekend. After deciding, everything else went pretty smoothly. 
• 11th grade Essential ? - What is the role of the individual in creating and sustaining change? 
  - In regards to the project, we all wanted to change the voting turnout to have more people in the United States. My position in this process was taking a good idea, and finding the flaws within it. Because if I didn't, other people would exploit it during conversations. With proper knowledge about the flaws with voting on the weekend, when someone else tries to find a flaw, we've already found a response for it.
• How has your understanding of the electoral process and whether or not the US is a democracy evolved during this unit?
  - Absolutely. For my portion of the paper, I had a lot of percentage rates and population counts. And after finding exact numbers for voting turnouts for the past few years, I'm really disappointed with how we've been doing things. Where other countries have 98% turnouts, the United States is still struggling with a measly 29%. And after seeing that only 1/3 of the United States votes, it was pretty shocking.
• How did you decide to best relay a message to a national audience with your marketing campaign?
  - I'm not necessarily sure if I'm answering this correctly, but within the final project we made it very "cheesy." It's still professional nonetheless, but the cheesy factor is clear. With information easy to understand with a funny little slogan, I have a feeling people would be interested after hearing about what we want changed.

• How did you group go about making a decision for what to focus on for the project?
  Well we waited until we were together in class and then we split up. We worked on our parts separately, but  we did come together when we had to review our stuff.
• 11th grade Essential ? - What is the role of the individual in creating and sustaining change? 
  It is there role to vote and that helps create change because they are picking the future and how it will change good or bad.
• How has your understanding of the electoral process and whether or not the US is a democracy evolved during this unit?
  Well i didn't know anything about the election because it didn't really apply to me. I found it interesting that hardly anyone votes and that it is actually difficult to vote. 
• How did you decide to best relay a message to a national audience with your marketing campaign?
  Well we wanted to make it appealing to everyone. Like we made a song that would appeal to the younger voters and then the print ad was more serious and that was supposed to appeal to the older voters.