es against the belief that "Its only natural that people of one religious persuasion should vote for people of their own persuasion." According to Simon, groups that do not feel completely accepted in society tend to vote for someone they can identify with. However, with more and more acceptance of various ethnic and religious groups, this type of voting happens less and less.One such example of this is the John F. Kennedy election. While many Catholics did vote for Kennedy, their votes were probably cancelled out by those who voted against him for being Catholic. The results are expected in the upcoming election with Joseph Lieberman (Simon 33). One would hope that in our more accepting society this type of voting would not occur, but it most likely wont have a great impact on the results. While many Orthodox Jews will be favoring Democrats Gore and Lieberman and Protestants favoring Republican Bush and Cheney in the upcoming election, Catholics, as a whole, seem to be undecided. Catholics have tended to vote to the left, but this election seems to puzzle the 15 million Roman Catholic voters. The pro-life movement causes the Catholic voter to sway to the left, while the call to care for the needy and underprivileged pulls to the right (Calvo).John Green, a professor at the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron in Ohio, even goes as far to say, "The election may hinge on this, Winkler 4because while there are a lot of groups that can go either way, this is one of the biggest. Theyre a very conflicted people" (Calvo). A Catholic priest, Rev. Ralph Gross, illustrated the struggle Catholics have in choosing between Bush and Gore. He described Bush as a governor who campaigns against abortion while simultaneously overseeing more executions than any governor in history. Gross describes Gore, on the other hand, as a congressman who strongly opposed abortion before doing a complete about-face. While ...
