Aspen Porter is a student at Grayson College majoring in radiology. They took a political participation class to become more informed and involved in the political process. Aspen believes the biggest issue in Texas is illegal immigration and wants stricter enforcement of immigration laws. They also learned about the importance of voting and how impactful Texas is in federal elections and decision making.

1. Aspen Porter
Participation in Politics Project
This Photo by Unknown author is licensed under CC BY-NC.

2. About me
My name is Aspen Porter. I attend
school at Grayson college and I am
majoring in radiology.
This political cartoon is an
accurate description about what is
and has been going on in Texas for
a long time now. It depicts
democrats and republicans
battling for superiority.

3. Motivation
There are a couple of things that motivate me to be
a more active participant in society and the
political system. The most I ever feel like I need to
get up and be active is when the political
campaigns and elections are happening. This is
because the youth is the future of Texas and
educating myself on these kinds of things early on
will help me to better understand in the future
years and make good decisions to better our state.
I know that my last slide was the issue of
republicans and democrats battling for power, but I
hope to see republicans stay as the heads of state.
This is just because I think that their ideas and
beliefs are a better fit for Texas. I'm all for change,
but it has always been this way here and I think it
works out very well.

4. What I Learned
The most shocking information I
learned this year probably isn't new
information to most people, but I had
no idea about it. I never thought that
campaigns cost so much money. For
example, in 2002, Tony Sanchez spent
65 million dollars when he was running
against Rick Perry for Governor and he
still lost. That’s A LOT of money.
I wasn't expecting to learn about the
different courts in Texas, civil and
criminal. Now that I think about it, it is
part of the government, but it just
wasn’t what I had in mind when I
signed up for this class. I'm glad we
talked about it though because these
are things many people will have to
deal with sometime throughout their
life.
I would like to know more about the
process of elections. Where you start,
how to get sponsors, how to gain trust,
things like that.

5. Political Issue
The biggest issue in Texas right now, in my opinion, is illegal
immigration. It is important for this generation to put a stop to this
immediately because it will cause so many problems in the future if
we don’t. Texas is the third leading state with the most
unauthorized immigrants. The huge problem isn't really with the
immigrants themselves, it's with how lenient our government is
being with the laws. I think it is important to enforce all the laws
equally because if people think Texas is getting soft and becoming
more lenient, there's no telling what people will try to do in the
future in hoped of our officials letting it slide.

6. Decision Making
There's no denying that Texas plays a huge role
in the decision making in the federal
government. Since Texas has more
representatives, we have somewhat of a bigger
voice in the decisions to be made. Texas also
has the second largest amount of electoral
votes in elections which takes a huge toll on
the outcomes.
This Photo by Unknown author is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND.

7. What I'll take away
This class has taught me many important life lessons. I
learned just how important it is to vote. Before this, I
really had no desire of being active in my state's
politics, but now I hope to become a more involved
citizen. It may have been because we had to write an
essay, but I learned the most about the death penalty. I
found that lesson very interesting and will remember it
and take the lessons I learned from it with me in the
future. I also learned how to use my resources and
manage my time more efficiently through this course.