Political Issues

This assignment is designed to familiarize yourself with a political issue that matters to you and to encourage you to find out who your representatives are and where they stand on the issue. The assignment is also designed to encourage you to actively participate in civic life and by giving you the chance to contribute to state politics by contacting one of your representatives.   For this assignment, you need to identify an important topic in current political life and write a position paper, after assessing both sides of your chosen issue. You must rely on 4 – 6 sources, and support your argument with evidenced-based reasoning.  Based on your research you will need to compose a letter or an e-mail to one of your representatives – local, state, or federal – regarding your issue.  The level of government you contact will depend on the issue, so you will need to research which level of government addresses your issue and who your representatives are. In your letter/e-mail, address the specific issue:  state what the issue is, and why it is important to you.  Optimally, the e-mail will focus on a specific piece of legislation currently being considered or a specific action taken by the representative, though in all cases this may not be possible. Try to formulate a letter that will have an impact on your representative’s position. Your phrasing will depend partly on whether or not the representative is sympathetic to your view.   Be specific in choosing your issues. For example, do not simply write “pro-education” (you will be hard-pressed to find a representative who states that s/he is “anti-education”). Instead, choose something like, “school vouchers” or “higher pay for public school teachers”.  For your chosen issue, find out where your representative stands.  If possible, list specific pieces of legislation that have been sponsored by the representative, or that the representative has voted on.  You may also want to include any ratings that related interest groups have given your representative on your issue.  If you do this, be sure to describe the interest group’s stance on your issue, as well as what the group’s rating means. (you just have to write the position paper, not the letter.

 

 

Just make sure as an additional information to let me know which level of government you targeted. This assignment is really crucial so please message me if there is any sort of confusion. Thank you so much.