2004-11-7
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VOICE ONE:
Welcome to THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English. I'm Faith
Lapidus.
VOICE TWO:
And I'm Steve Ember. Coming up ... results from the state and
national elections of two thousand four.
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VOICE ONE:
That was Senator John Kerry last Wednesday, telling his
supporters that he had lost the presidential election.
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President George W. Bush begins his second and final term January
twentieth. But first there is the Electoral College tradition.
Electors in each state have to meet next month to make the vote
official.
VOICE TWO:
More than fifty-nine million
people voted for President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. That
was fifty-one percent. And that was three and one-half million more
than voted for John Kerry and his vice presidential candidate,
Senator John Edwards. The Democrats had forty-eight percent.
George Walker Bush is America's forty-third president. But he is
the first in sixteen years to win a majority of the popular vote.
The last one was his father, in nineteen eighty-eight.
VOICE ONE:
On colored maps on election-night television, red states meant
Republican victories. Blue states meant Democratic victories. In the
end, the map looked very much like the map in the two thousand
election.
Mister Kerry won all three states
on the West Coast -- California, Oregon and Washington state -- as
well as Hawaii. He also won the Northeast including New Hampshire,
which last time voted for Mister Bush. And Mister Kerry won states
in the upper Midwest including Minnesota and Wisconsin. But most of
the country was red.
The election was decided when a victory for Mister Bush became
clear in Ohio, a large state in the Midwest. There was a long night
of waiting. But this election was not as close as many people had
expected.
Four years ago, when Mister Bush faced Al Gore, Americans had to
wait more than a month to know their president.
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VOICE TWO:
Republicans also increased their strength in Congress in the
general elections last Tuesday. Most notably, former Congressman
John Thune defeated Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota. Mister
Daschle is the Democratic minority leader in the Senate. Fifty years
have passed since a Senate leader of either party was voted out of
office.
Republicans gained a majority in both houses ten years ago. In
the next Congress, they will control fifty-five of the one hundred
seats in the Senate. They will control more than two hundred thirty
of the four hundred thirty-five seats in the House of
Representatives.
VOICE ONE:
Democrats did score a few victories. A new star in the party,
Illinois state Senator Barack Obama, was easily elected to the
United States Senate.
Mister Obama gave a major speech
this summer at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. He is
the son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from the
United States.
Only two other African Americans have been elected to the Senate
since the rebuilding after the Civil War in the eighteen-sixties.
VOICE TWO:
In Colorado, Democrat Ken Salazar, the state attorney general,
defeated Republican businessman Pete Coors in a race for the United
States Senate. But in Florida, Republican Mel Martinez defeated
Democrat Betty Castor, a former state education chief, to replace
retiring Senator Bob Graham. Mister Martinez was born in Cuba. He
served President Bush as housing secretary.
Eleven states had to elect governors last week. Here, voters were
about as likely to choose Democrats as Republicans.
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VOICE ONE:
On the morning of Election Day,
long lines formed at schools, community centers and other voting
places. And this was not just in the so-called battleground states.
Democrats and Republicans had both signed up millions of new voters,
many of them young.
Curtis Gans is director of the Committee for the Study of the
American Electorate, a research group. He says about one hundred
twenty million Americans voted. By his estimate, the turnout was the
highest since nineteen sixty-eight, at almost sixty percent of
possible voters.
Most political experts had suggested that higher numbers of
voters would be better for John Kerry. This was not the case.
VOICE TWO:
We get some sense of who voted
from the questioning of voters for exit polls. Fifty-four percent
were women. Women have outnumbered men in voting for president for
the past twenty years. More women chose Senator Kerry. But women
were more likely to choose President Bush as four years ago.
Thirty-seven percent of voters said they were Democrats.
Thirty-seven percent said they were Republicans. Independents were
divided almost evenly between Senator Kerry and President Bush.
Election-day reports said that young people represented the same
share of voters as four years ago. But University of Maryland
researchers disputed the idea that young voters stayed away. They
noted that all age groups increased their voting.
The researchers say the percentage of young people who voted
reached about half for the first time in years. In fact, they were
the only age group strongly for the Democrats.
VOICE ONE:
Even if not as many young voters showed up as some people had
hoped, conservative white Christians did show up. The Republican
Party targeted this base of support throughout the campaign. Exit
polls found that they made up about one-fourth of all voters. Many
experts believe they were the deciding voice.
Terrorism and the economy were major issues to voters. But a
national exit poll found that even more people said they cared most
about "moral values." These include issues like same-sex marriage
and the ending of unwanted pregnancies.
VOICE TWO:
Elections in the United States are organized by local officials.
They choose the voting equipment and ballot designs. Four years ago
people had many problems voting, especially in Florida.
This year the major parties sent thousands of lawyers to voting
places to prepare for anything. By the end of Election Day, however,
most of the problems seemed minor.
VOICE ONE:
Spending for federal campaigns this year reached an estimated
four thousand million dollars. The Center for Responsive Politics
says this is a thirty percent increase from four years ago. The
research group says more than one thousand million dollars was spent
in the presidential race.
The elections were the first under a new political finance law,
known as the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. This law bans unlimited
money, usually from businesses or unions, in federal campaigns.
Instead, the law increases the limit on how much individuals can
give in direct support of candidates.
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VOICE TWO:
Americans also had many state issues to decide. Eleven states
asked voters if marriage should be defined as being between a man
and a woman. Voters in all eleven states agreed. They approved
amendments to their state constitutions to ban same-sex marriages.
Thirteen of the fifty states now have such bans.
In California, a ballot measure to pay for stem cell research
passed by fifty-nine percent. The state is to spend three thousand
million dollars over ten years. Scientists will investigate possible
uses for stem cells from embryos for medical treatments.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, supported the
measure. President Bush has restricted federal financing of studies
on embryonic stem cells. Opponents say such research destroys life.
VOICE ONE:
In Arizona, voters agreed to require people to prove their
American citizenship before they can sign up to vote. The initiative
also requires state employees to report illegal immigrants who
request public aid. Initiatives are a way for citizens to bypass a
state legislature and put a measure to a popular vote.
The Democratic and Republican parties both opposed the measure.
But many people in the state say more needs to be done about illegal
immigration. Arizona borders Mexico.
In Colorado, voters rejected a proposal to change the way that
state awards its nine electoral votes. Almost all states, including
Colorado, have a winner-takes-all system.
VOICE TWO:
Voters, however, did agree to require Colorado to get at least
ten percent of its electricity from the wind and sun by two thousand
fifteen.
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Our program was written by Jerilyn Watson, Jill Moss and Caty
Weaver, who was also our producer. This is Steve Ember.
VOICE ONE:
And this is Faith Lapidus. To send us e-mail, write to
special@voanews.com. And join us again next week for THIS IS
AMERICA, in VOA Special English.