ORLANDO, FLORIDA — I met up with Aubrey Jewett, a University of Central Florida political science professor, to find out why the “I-4 corridor,” a stretch running from Daytona on the Atlantic coast all the way over to the Tampa on Florida’s west coast, is critical to winning the presidential election. Jewett explains why this once Republican region is slowly turning Democratic.

Related stories from central Florida:
Video: Yes, We Van! Early voting made easy for university students in central Florida (Republicans accepted)

Unemployed in central Florida: Voices behind the vote

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BUENAVENTURA LAKES, FLORIDA — While visiting an early voting location in Buenaventura Lakes, less than 10 miles from Disney World, I was intrigued by one voter, David Fernandez Rido. He’s an unemployed small-business owner who is struggling to make his mortgage payments and find a job in this depressed economy. Like nearly one in two residents of this community, he’s Hispanic. He’ll soon be in the majority.

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ORLANDO, FLORIDA — Early voting in Central Florida’s Orange County has already dwarfed 2004. Four years ago, a total of 79,000 people voted. Today, with two more days left in early voting, some 114,000 people have already turned out here.

Part of that total comes from the “Yes, We Van!” shuttles at the University of Central Florida. These students have been running vans from campus to early voting sites. They’re supporting Obama for the presidency, but they’ll take any student who wants to vote. Takeaway producer Jennifer Hsu rode along.

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Some of the most accurate polls around might be a little on the unconventional side. For the last several campaign cycles, the winner of the Presidential election has always been the character whose Halloween mask has sold the most, according to costume seller “Party City!” School children taking part in the Scholastic Kids’ Election have predicted the President correctly every year since 1940, save for twice (Dewey v. Truman in 1948, and Nixon v. Kennedy, in 1960). And at 7-11 stores, the choice of coffee cup factors in to how the coffee tastes… or does it?

The Takeaway’s culture contributor Mary Elizabeth Williams went on assignment in New York to investigate how coffee cups, Halloween masks and school children predict the outcome of the 2008 election.

I spoke with Gregg Forrest, who owns and runs Layers Bakery with his wife Jeanne in Henderson, Nevada. Early voting started on October 18, but Forrest has been running an unofficial poll for several weeks from his bakery counter with some startlingly accurate results.

UPDATE:
The Layers cookie poll finished up with 467 “O-Biden” cookies to 352 for “McPalin.” (That’s 57% to 42%.) The bakery’s polling accuracy continued to be uncannily dead-on: the official voting results for Nevada showed 55% for Obama, 42% for McCain. (This is only a guess, but perhaps if Layers had offered (and sold) a handful of third-party cookies, they’d have been even closer to the final results.)

Andrea Bernstein on Clark County voters

Students at the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science are showing everyone what it means to be 18 in ‘08. — HaleyCrum, Mississippi, MTV Street Team ‘08

Twenty-four-year-old University of Miami sophomore Walt Shellabarger enlisted in the Marines when he was 17. His company was involved in the First Battle of Fallujah in Iraq. He lost friend and squad leader Daniel Amaya in the battle, and he hopes to live up the sacrifice Amaya made for him. — AnthonyFL, Florida, MTV Street Team ‘08

President Clinton rallies VCU students and community for Barack Obama. — comptonlh, Virginia, MTV Street Team ‘08

Twenty-nine-year-old Josh Segall runs for Congress. If elected he will become one of the youngest members of the U.S. House of Representatives. — David_Whiteside, Alabama, MTV Street Team ‘08

Calling strangers and pitching your politics - does it work? These DC residents know their 3 electoral votes will most likely go to the Democrat - so, the Obama campaign has mobilized their man power to target undecided Virginia voters. — EricaAmerica, D.C., MTV Street Team ‘08

With the tightening credit markets around the nation, I wanted to find out how it was affecting a regular businessman in small Moscow, Idaho. So I went to an old employer of mine, Dale Keeney, who owns Keeney Bros Music Centers in Moscow and Lewiston, Idaho. So far his interest rates have skyrocketed, without any blunders on his behalf, and this holiday shopping season may decide the future of his 30-year-old company, a staple of the Moscow community. — Brian Rich, Idaho, MTV Street Team ‘08

The Takeaway took several trips to this critical swing state to talk to voters and find out which way they’ll go on November 4th.

Reporting by Andrea Bernstein, Mark Garrison, Jennifer Hsu and Molly Webster.

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Femi Oke meets up with some Takeaway Listeners in New York after the last of the presidential debates. Fresh from watching John McCain and Barack Obama debate, they make television political pundits look like pussycats.

With the presidential campaign season coming down to its home stretch, everyone is talking politics — even elementary school students. We visited Mrs. Kunkel’s 5th grade class in Boiling Springs, Pennsylvania, and asked them what their one question would be for Republican nominee John McCain or Democratic nominee Barack Obama. Watch what they had to ask….

More from Mrs. Kunkel’s class: Fifth graders on the fairness of a Wall Street rescue plan

Guest: Elizabeth Holland, John Hockenberry’s mother-in-law

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It felt like Sarah Palin was winking at me constantly during last night’s vice-presidential debate. But in fact she only winked four times. I know, because I went through the entire broadcast and counted….

Wink #1: “And the American workforce is the greatest in this world, with the ingenuity and the work ethic that is just entrenched in our workforce. That’s a positive. That’s encouragement. [Wink.] And that’s what John McCain meant.”

Wink #2: “And how long have I been [wink] at this, like five weeks? So there hasn’t been a whole lot that I’ve promised, except to do what is right for the American people.”

Wink #3: “As for disagreeing with John McCain and how our administration would work, what do you expect? A team of mavericks, of course we’re not going to agree on 100 percent of everything. As we discuss ANWR there, at least we can agree to disagree on that one. [Wink.] I will keep pushing him on ANWR.”

Wink #4: “I come from a house full of school teachers. My grandma was, my dad [wink] who is in the audience today, he’s a schoolteacher, had been for many years.”

“Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them.” –Laurence J. Peter

As a young scholar, I’ve paradoxically dedicated myself to a career in which I continually ask questions and receive no definitive answers. And the only answers that abound ultimately prompt a new set of more specific questions, leaving me in a spiral of increasing complexity. Needless to say, I tend to teeter between complicated clarity and debilitating nihilism. Such is my experience as a young American voter.

Orange County: the “OC,” home to Disneyland, the Angels, and my hometown, “Surf City.” Growing up in Huntington Beach was a dream. Where we ditched school to go to the beach; where we complained when temperatures dropped below seventy degrees; where everyone has a car, and a place to park it; where there seemed to be no poverty or homelessness, no violence, and no crime; where no one seemed to be in need or even in want of anything.

Orange County, for these reasons, is truly a wonderful place to raise children. My family moved there from Arcadia, a town at the quiet foothills of Los Angeles County, when I was eleven years old. I had a fortunate adolescence, though I was conscious of difference from the start, which sharpened my growing pains and complicated some of my realizations.

It was when I moved to OC that I truly realized that things were murky beneath pristine surfaces. There was no homelessness because the indigents were picked up and bussed to Los Angeles. There was no crime because there was no poverty, because the poor people could not even afford to live nearby. I eventually saw that the beautiful landscapes and carefree lifestyles that characterized my home in fact served as a veneer for the real problems going on at the periphery of our community, the neglect of which was justified by racist ambivalence.

I come from Egyptian Muslim immigrant parents. My father, who was born the youngest of nine children in an impoverished family, sought the economic comfort that The American Dream suggested was attainable. With his intense determination and proficiency in science, along with a few good breaks, it was not long after moving to America that he attained a PhD in Aerospace Engineering and began his career as a professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

My mother, on the other hand, had a wealthy Egyptian upbringing, yet graduated from medical school in Cairo as one of the handful of female doctors there. Despite having no relatives in America, she desperately wanted to raise children free from the social norms, political injustices, and gendered religious pressures by which she had felt so stifled. So she did, and she went through medical school all over again to attain a degree in the U.S., and has been a psychiatrist here for over twenty years. Though I was born in raised in America, and people generally assumed I was white, I realized that race and ethnicity were common ways for people to simplify their own outlooks on the world.

On census forms I always felt uncomfortable ticking the White/Caucasian category on surveys, though that is officially the racial category to which Americans from Arabic-speaking countries belong. Though Egypt is an African country, the incongruence between race and geography rendered it inappropriate for me to call myself African-American, as I had eventually learned.

Race was more of a social construct than an objective reality for me, something that restricted me to stereotypes to which I could not relate. Rather than box myself in categories I felt did not accurately characterize myself, I decided I was simply “other.”

And then 9/11 happened. Things had never seemed so complicated.

I felt the true devastation of a country I was born in, and was touched by the sincere goodwill and sense of unity that emerged immediately afterward. It was a deeply formative time to be a young American.

I was angered that a singular pathological group could generalize their actions to the cause of an entire region and religion and exacerbate already tangible racial tensions for millions of people. And I also recognized that this was not merely the isolated act of a single group, but rather a climax of a multitude of intricate historical, economic, and political trajectories intersecting at once.

And yet at the same time, people with whom I also felt great empathy were increasingly discriminated and overtly antagonized. Never before had I so sharply realized what it meant for race to be socially constructed, until news stories flooded in about people falling victim to hate crimes because they were mistaken for being Arab or Muslim.

Several Hindu men in turbans were gunned down in convenience stores. A good friend of my parents, who owned a popular Arabic grocery store in Orange, was also killed in the post 9/11 anti-Arab/Muslim rage. He, who left behind a family and children, was a devout Christian.

I grew weary of rhetoric that sought to alienate and problematize groups considered different, reminiscent of the talk that foreshadows tragic losses of human life throughout history. It seemed that the categories that delineated people were often arbitrary, slippery, even deceptive.

I wondered why freedom and good fortune was framed as a zero-sum game, unfairly reserved for those who happened to belong to groups with the power to withhold it from others. I began exploring the origins of nationalism, its different conceptions and appropriations, and the theories attempting to explain the forces behind its power to bond and divide all at once. I wanted to understand why media presented conflict in such two-dimensional ways and perpetuated much of the simplistic thinking that I felt hindered productive discourse on important issues such as the economy and the war.

I also sought to understand what motivates ordinary people to organize and engage in their communities under common interests so that we can enhance the integrity of American democracy.
I was influenced by a variety of cultures and environments, but more so in the ways they interacted to reveal to me fundamental contradictions in presumed logics about life. As an Egyptian American, I learned that the best sides of human character are ignorant to nation, religion, race, and other social constructs. As a humanitarian, I attempt to transcend the divisions constructed by identity politics to rather see issues that affect real people whose similarities far outnumber their differences.

As a lover of music and creative expression, I explore and value the ways in which people are inspired by various art forms that yield a tangible impact on society and its institutions. And as a concerned citizen and academic, I seek to examine, perhaps even challenge, the concepts, institutions and processes considered to be the heart of our functioning as a democratic society.

After finishing college at University of California, Irvine, I decided it was time to leave Orange County and explore the world a little more. I ended up in New York City, where I lived for a year while applying to graduate school.

That year in New York proved to be intensely inspiring. It provided me with a refreshingly different mindscape, one with different assumptions, more varied possibilities, and broader horizons. I felt the pulse of the city, and knew that I could thrive in an environment where art was everywhere, where difference was appreciated, and where the problems that abounded were left undisguised, and people relentlessly struggle for their acknowledgment. And most importantly, there were possibilities and opportunities available to overcome them that begged to be realized.

With interests in media, political science, sociology, and anthropology, I researched and applied to doctoral programs that were interdisciplinary in nature. Not yet done with my affair with the East Coast, I moved to Philadelphia, where I am now a second year doctoral student at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, studying political communication and behavior of various kinds.

I may know who I want to vote for, but I’m no closer to answering larger, more important questions which issues in the buildup to the election prompt, than simply who has the better character, policy, experience, or whatever the considerations may be. I’m concerned with the processes underlying those questions like: How is character constructed and responded to in campaigns? Why are certain policies framed the way they are, and for what purpose? What kind of experience is salient to the public?

And there are yet more basic inquiries that we might lose sight of: What are the guiding principles of American democracy? How can we use our understanding of human nature and communication to encourage greater participation in the processes and organizations that shape our choices down the road? What steps can we as citizens take to make this political system more responsive to our needs?
As scholars, we inundate ourselves with questions and rarely find definitive answers. Rather than simplify these issues, we seek to complicate them, to identify the nuances and caveats that qualify our understandings. As much as it frustrates me, at times, even renders me a bit nihilistic, I do believe that there is an inherent benefit to asking questions regardless of the clarity of answer.

In a political system colored by polar ideologies as American as apple pie, we naturally assume that any issue should be understood in dichotomous terms: Democrat or Republican; Black or White; For Us or Against Us; Good or Evil. We refuse to even wonder whether there are other possibilities of looking at things, a so-called third dimension that may lead to more productive strategies, policies, and actions.
The simple answer? No answer that even begins to approach the truth is ever simple.

I choose to make a stance by participating through the formal avenues granted to me, but I see myself as having a greater duty as a young citizen and scholar—to complicate the seemingly simple in search for better possibilities and figure out how we can realize them to make this a better country and world for everyone. — Heidi Khaled, University of Pennsylvania

Heidi Khaled is a second-year doctoral student at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

CBS’s David Letterman on McCain: “You don’t suspend your campaign. This doesn’t smell right. This isn’t the way a tested hero behaves.”

CBS’s Katie Couric to Sarah Palin: “Specific examples in [McCain's] 26 years of pushing for more regulation?” Palin’s reply: “I’ll try to find you some and I’ll bring them to you.”

What constitutes leadership in the world today?

Leadership can be defined as the ability to inspire or influence a group of people, or human behavior, to meet a specific goal or create change. Thus, leadership becomes associated with greatness, but what seems to go unmentioned most of the time is how leadership affects the daily lives of people not only is our communities but around the world.

People must pay close attention to the role that heads of states play as leaders. Only after understanding how one individual can affect the lives of millions for better or for worse can people decide if it is time for a different form of leadership in order to shift a country in a new direction.

I am ready for new leadership in the United States. President George W. Bush chose to use his leadership to wage a “War on Terrorism,” build a wall to divide the U.S. and Mexico, invade Afghanistan and Iraq, allowed our economy to spiral downwards, and so forth. Thus, I will continue to watch the U.S. election process with a critical eye, in the hopes that one of the candidates will ensure not only my interests as a citizen of this country but also ensure the interests of millions of people living here without their human rights. Let us not forget that in making powerful decisions, such as voting for a presidential candidate, one vote can change the course of history. We live in an interconnected planet; no need to be self centered. We have to make decisions with a conscious understanding that we all affect each other in one way or another.

Let me introduce myself before I go any further. My name is Alejandra Lopez. I’m 20, and I was born and raised in New York. I currently attend Pace University in downtown Manhattan, majoring in Political Science. I, like many others in the U.S., am a daughter of immigrant parents that traveled here from Mexico in hopes of a better job, a dream home, and a higher level of education for their children. Over 12 million people living in the U.S. are undocumented immigrants. Yes, the number is impressive, but what concerns me is the way that these people living within U.S. borders will be affected and dealt with in the next presidency. However, the issue of immigration is not the only one that gives me heartaches, but I admit that I am deeply concerned.

As a Hispanic, and specifically a Mexican-American, my life journey has exposed me to the hardships and inequality of life in America but also has inspired me to believe in the power of the people and that working hard can make even the most impossible dream a reality.

Inspired by revolutionary ideals of freedom, equality, rejection of tyranny, respect, and human rights, I aim to give The Takeaway’s “New Voices” project a different perspective- one that will analyze the rhetoric, leadership, and goals of the U.S. presidential candidates through the eyes of a young Latina living in New York. –Alejandra Lopez, Pace University

Throughout the course of history, the melding of feverous determination and keen willpower often shaped the nature of social communication across cultures. Confucius said: “What the superior man seeks is in himself, what the small man seeks is in others.”

My name is Kyle Magee, and over the course of the next few weeks, it will be of great interest to me in using the aforementioned ideal as a method of analyzing the general presidential election through specific integration of small-town Missouri ideals.

Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, I moved to St. Louis, Missouri, back in 2000, at the age of 12. I remember thinking to myself: Here I am, a markedly curious, skinny white African boy, now fully immersed in the culture of the land of opportunity, the “American Dream.”

Culture-shock was an understatement in the beginning, especially since my classmates in the eighth grade expected me to be black upon my arrival. Now, a few years later and a few measures wiser, I attend Truman State University in rural Kirksville, Missouri, as a senior Communication/Journalism major, anxious to experience as much as physically possible in a community considered the largest town for 90 miles in any direction and situated roughly 30 miles from the desolate, far-encompassing farmlands hugging the southern Iowa border.

I consider myself a passive, laid-back youngster interested in the betterment of my surrounding community and the friendly folk who call it home. The majority of Truman students hail from the suburbs of St. Louis, the dominant east-state community that rivals the skyscrapers and barbeque of Kansas City in both population and the entertainment factor.

Ancient and contemporary philosophical figures, such as Rousseau, Descartes and Nietzsche, have come to shape the nature of my social credence considering how dearly I hold the ideals of human rights, equality and social freedom close to my heart.

Inspiration from the early ’70s and mid-’80s punk movement plays an important role in my musical cultivation. I admire figures like Ian MacKaye, frontman of Minor Threat and Fugazi and founder of the straight-edge movement. Individuals who stand up for what they believe in certainly have a positive impact on people willing to get involved and active.

The message of equality through peace that Black Panther Fred Hampton preached, revolutionary ideals upheld in small guerrilla war-camps by Marxist-Argentine “Che” Guevara and Nelson Mandela’s fight for freedom through hateful apartheid times; these are periods in history that I will never forget as particularly inspiring towards my outlook on life.

This year’s election will certainly prove to be an historic affair, given the nature of both party tickets. I am particularly honored to be a part of The Takeaway’s community grassroots coverage effort and look forward to sharing ideas, discussing political activism and hearing what you have to say! –Kyle Magee, Truman State University

Since 9-11 anti-Arab and anti-Muslim discrimination is on the rise. In an act that was contrary to his message of change, Campaign volunteers for Barack Obama refused to allow two Muslim American women to sit behind the candidate during a June rally at Detroit’s Joe Louis Arena. Michigan is home to the largest population of Arabs outside the Middle East. Several young Arab Americans spoke with Nadir about this incident and the tensions they endure every day. –Nadir, Michigan, MTV Street Team ‘08

Richmond, California, is home to one of the US’ largest oil refineries. Originally built by Standard Oil in 1901, the plant has been owned by Chevron since 1984 when a merger formed the oil super-power. For a century much of the cities work force, economic growth and eventual depression has been linked to the giant plant. Now the city of Richmond is fighting back. By teaching young people how to install Solar Panels on low income roofs they are creating jobs, reducing crime and fighting global warming. –CarlDBrown , California, MTV Street Team ‘08

In North Dakota, where the unemployment rate is below the national average, there are more jobs available than there are people willing to work them. Two young men have made very different decisions about what to do with their lives - either stay in their home state, or move out. –CatalanoND, North Dakota, MTV Street Team ‘08

Sholom Keller and Jason Washburn are both veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and members of the organization Iraq Veterans Against the War. Both are dealing with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and have experienced homelessness since returning home. In this video, I talk to them and others about the very real possibility that the psychological impact of these wars combined with inadequate government care and community support are creating a new generation of homeless veterans. –CassidyHartmann, Pennsylvania, MTV Street Team ‘08

Senators Lisa Murkowski and Ted Stevens on the energy crisis facing Alaska, and how it heavily impacts the locals in the Last Frontier –alaskadani, Alaska, MTV Street Team ‘08

The National Congress of American Indians launched its’ national meth campaign in Albuquerque, NM. Although the campaign launched earlier this year in April it is now in full swing across the country. The campaign seeks to target Native American communities. –cmbegayNM, New Mexico, MTV Street Team ‘08

Arkansas environmental activists are stepping up their efforts to stop construction of a 1.5 billion dollar coal-fired power plant in a southeastern corner of the state. By showing environmental documentaries and starting a petition drive and letter writing campaign, James Burke, a state organizer with the Ecological Conservation Organization, is bringing together a diverse group of concerned citizens from all across the state to support his “No New Coal” campaign. –malcolmglover1, Arkansas, MTV Street Team ‘08

Tucson Border Patrol agents watch over 13% of the entire Southwest border. It’s a small percent, but it’s the busiest section in the country. Thanks to public attention the border is getting more secure, and as a result illegal crossers and drug traffickers are changing the way they do business. Take a look and see what’s going on. –nicolefagin, Arizona, MTV Street Team ‘08

Chris Higginbotham was a graduate student with me at UNC Chapel Hill, but on Saturday, May 18, 2008, the Army placed Chris back in active duty for “a period not to exceed 400 days.” Here is his story. (Iraq footage courtesy of Chris Higginbotham from his first tour in Iraq.) –cbabb, North Carolina, MTV Street Team ‘08

The Roan Plateau is a huge swath of land that spans thousands acres on Colorado’s western slope. On August 14th, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) fetched $114 million from oil and gas companies for 55,000 acres on top of the Roan Plateau. The main bidder was Vantage Energy, which purchased about 35,000 of the 55,000 acres up for lease. Over 17,000 citizens on the Western Slope have sent letters protesting the sale to the BLM. In these parts however, it’s just the nature of natural gas. –Trevor Martin, Colorado, MTV Street Team ‘08

It’s been 35 years since Roe vs. Wade and abortions are still legal in Montana. But the debate has never ended. CI-100 brought the subject back up, and K’Lynn Sloan spoke to women on both sides of the issue, doing what they believe is right to protect women. –KLynn_MT, Montana, MTV Street Team ‘08

The US Department of Veterans Affairs has 15,000 beds for homeless veterans across the country, but in Connecticut alone 5,000 veterans are homeless every night. I went to “Homes for the Brave”, a shelter for homeless veterans, and discussed the problem with its director and three residents. –kristendeptula, Connecticut, MTV Street Team ‘08