Representative institutions no longer represent voters. Instead, they have been short-circuited, steadily corrupted by an institutionalized system of bribery that renders them responsive to powerful interest groups whose constituencies are the major corporations and wealthiest Americans. The courts, in turn, when they are not increasingly handmaidens of corporate power, are consistently deferential to the claims of national security. Elections have become heavily subsidized non-events that typically attract at best merely half of an electorate whose information about foreign and domestic politics is filtered through corporate-dominated media. Citizens are manipulated into a nervous state by the media’s reports of rampant crime and terrorist networks, by thinly veiled threats of the Attorney General and by their own fears about unemployment. What is crucially important here is not only the expansion of governmental power but the inevitable discrediting of constitutional limitations and institutional processes that discourages the citizenry and leaves them politically apathetic

This passage explains how society's changes are effecting the substantial qualities of elections. The media plays a direct role in the way people analyzes themselves and others, therefore, politics can now turn to the media to help gain an audience that would otherwise follow the norm.Also, while the media is generalizing the issues Americans face daily, its allows for people to worry less about voting and focus on the issues the state deems necessary. While everyone is distracted the government gains more power and authority to make changes where they see fit.

Loving vs Virginia

In 1958, two residents of Virginia, Mildred Jeter, a black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, were married in the District of Columbia. The Lovings returned to Virginia shortly thereafter. The couple was then charged with violating the state's antimiscegenation statute, which banned inter-racial marriages. The Lovings were found guilty and sentenced to a year in jail (the trial judge agreed to suspend the sentence if the Lovings would leave Virginia and not return for 25 years).

The Supreme Court decided that Virginia's antimiscegenation law violated the Equal Clause of the 14th Amendment by reminding the state that any deliberations made against someone based solely off race, was "odious to free people" and could be subject to "the most rigid scrutiny". While the state argued, the court ruled, the state had no legitimate reason to discriminate against the union based off racial classification and deemed with no relation to "rational purpose". The state also violated the Due Process clause which clearly states "Under our Constitution," wrote Chief Justice Earl Warren, "the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual, and cannot be infringed by the State.

I believe this topic is important because it proved how much effort went into regaining independence and individuality within states and communities. It allowed the people to have control over their own families and unions with out being accused of crimes.Most importantly the freedom to marry between races helped to disseminate the idea of equality after the effects of slavery, segregation and discrimination .