opinion
Liberty Champion | March 8, 2016 | A5
Super Tuesday Recap
The March 15 primaries might make the GOP’s field of candidates even smaller Lee Sutherland lsutherland6@liberty.edu
If the craziness of the first day of the NCAA tournament had any comparison, it would be Super Tuesday. Eleven states voted Tuesday, March 1, including Virginia, and a total 1,460 delegates were up for grabs. This is every political junkie’s favorite night. Virginia was one of the many hotly contested primaries of the night. Businessman Donald Trump won the state with 34 percent of the vote, followed by Sen. Marco Rubio with 31 percent and Sen. Ted Cruz in a distant third with 16 percent, according to the Virginia Department of Elections. Rubio won the D.C. suburbs in Northern Virginia and was also the leading candidate at the Vines Center precinct at Liberty University. Students showed up in droves to vote for their preferred candidate, and the turnout for this year’s primary was double that of the turnout for the 2012 primary, according to Larry Provost of the Division of the Student Affairs. Rubio received 43 percent of the vote among students, followed by Cruz with 32 percent, Dr. Ben Carson with 13 percent and Trump with 7 percent. Liberty President Jerry Falwell tweeted after the results from the Virginia primary came in. “Proud of @LibertyU students for voting their conscience today and thinking for themselves unlike those at many univ who blindly follow admin,” Falwell wrote. It is hard to say who the winner of the night was. While Trump won the most states, he did not meet the expectations many had for him. Cruz may have been the true victor of the night, winning his home state of Texas handily and surprising everyone with a win in Oklahoma. Yet when you look at the big picture of the nomination process, Cruz needed to do much better in the SEC primaries than he did.
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VOTING — Eleven states across the country voted on Super Tuesday, March 1, and 1,460 delegates were handed out to candidates. Despite the support he received from Liberty students, Rubio had a very poor night. He did win his first state in Minnesota; however, his failure to reach the threshold of 20 percent in Texas cost him valuable delegates. He was nearly 100 delegates behind Trump and Cruz coming out of Super Tuesday. Maybe the most important takeaway from the night is the continued debate among Republicans about what the best way to take out Trump is. Some argue that clearing the field and allowing one candidate to go head to head with Trump is the best option. There have been many calls that Cruz should be that candidate after
strong showings in the four primaries Saturday, March 5. Cruz won the Maine and Kansas primaries while Trump won the Kentucky and Louisiana primaries. Others believe the best route is to have everyone stay in the race and force a contested convention. This puts the focus heavily on the March 15 primaries. If Rubio were to win his home state of Florida and Kasich were to win his home state of Ohio, the chances of one candidate cumulating the 1,237 delegates needed to win the nomination would be very slim. “In that case (Rubio winning Florida and Kasich winning Ohio), Trump still holds the delegate lead,” writes Mark Murray of
NBC News. “But he needs to win 66 percent of remaining delegates to get to 1,237 — and that could be hard to climb.” The March 15 primaries continue to grow in significance and may be the last stand against Trump becoming the Republican nominee, or it may be when he seals the deal for his nomination.
SUTHERLAND is the opinion editor.
Apple rejects FBI’s request Agencies and tech companies must work together to provide digital security Samantha Rozenblum serozenblum@liberty.edu
Edward Snowden is calling the San Bernadino Apple vs. FBI case “the most important tech case in a decade,” and after both sides spent nearly six hours testifying before Congress Monday, Feb. 29, the public should note that the outcome of this case could potentially set a precedent for all future digital privacy cases. The FBI had basically asked Apple to build what Apple CEO Tim Cook called a backdoor to the iPhone — more specifically to make a new version of the iPhone operating system that could reroute several important security features and could be installed on an iPhone recovered during the investigation of San Bernadino shooters Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik — and Apple said no. Tim Cook released a statement to all Apple customers, Feb. 16, stating that the FBI’s request has implications “far beyond the legal case at hand” and also that once this technology was created, there would be no way to ensure that it would not get into the wrong hands. Although FBI Director James Comey agreed that the outcome of this case could set a precedent for encryption cases in the future,
the FBI is currently only asking Apple to utilize its resources to investigate a single device in a single case. “This is not the end of privacy,” the Justice Department said, directly referencing the claims made by Apple to its customers. “Rather than assist the effort to fully investigate a deadly terrorist attack by obeying the court’s order, Apple has responded by publicly repudiating that order.” The prosecutors also accused Apple of exaggerating the difficulty of breaking into the specific phone and even accused the company of doing so out of concern for its business model and as a public brand marketing strategy. It did not take long for the presidential candidates to weigh in on such a significant issue, and as in many other controversies, Donald Trump was the first to speak up in favor of national security. “I agree 100 percent with the courts,” Trump said on “Fox and Friends.” “This is a case that certainly we should be able to get into the phone, and we should find out what happened and why it happened. …We have to do that.” Though Sen. Ted Cruz agreed that Apple had a point in refusing to put a backdoor in every cell phone, he did ultimately concede that the FBI’s request overrides
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TECHNOLOGY— Apple fights against a backdoor to an iPhone. Apple’s concern for precedents and digital privacy. “This concerns the phone of one of the San Bernardino (terrorists), and for law enforcement to get a judicial search order, that is consistent with the Fourth Amendment,” Cruz said. Sen. Marco Rubio agreed that a backdoor, if ever created, could be extremely devastating if hacked by a criminal group. “We’re going to have to work with the tech industry to figure out a way forward on encryption that allows us some capability to access information — especially in an emergency circumstance,” Rubio said.
The Democratic candidates refrained from taking any positions on the issue. There is no clear solution because the values of security and privacy are so sacred to American rights. Also, the definition of privacy has changed dramatically due to the explosion of media and digital sharing. Thus, defending digital security is a relatively new battle. “Historically, privacy was almost implicit, because it was hard to find and gather information,” Bill Gates said in 2014. “But in the digital world, whether it’s digital cameras or satellites or just what you click on, we need to
have more explicit rules — not just for governments but also for private companies.” Gates and Rubio accurately state that the government must strictly regulate the flow of digital information in order to maintain privacy for citizens as well as security and safety for America. Apple stated in the letter to its customers that it “do(es) not have sympathy for terrorists,” which is a wonderful thing to be reassured of, but it still does not help the FBI protect civilians or acquire any more information on the San Bernadino terrorists. If the government does not maintain national security, there will be no digital privacy to protect; thus, the American people should be patient with the courts and with Apple as they hopefully work toward a compromise that would set a precedent for placing appropriate value on security and privacy and would prioritize safety, peace and justice.
ROZENBLUM is an opinion writer.
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