In the beginning of the semester, there was a panel consisting of eight students that had attended either the Republican National Convention or the Democratic National Convention. These students were accepted into a twelve day seminar where they were required to carry out certain tasks for the convention. I learned how over the course of time, the nature of the conventions have changed. Originally, they were for each party to come together and vote on one person to represent them in the election. Now they are mainly used to advertise the nominee and put on a show that the entire party supports the nominee. This is because the citizens feel more compelled to vote for someone who has the support of their party rather than a person that does not have the backing of whom they are representing. In order to maintain this front of unity, there are many things that go on behind the scenes to ensure that there will be no displays of support for another candidate. For example, all the signs that viewers see on television are made to look like people brought them, but actually, these signs are pre-made and handed out for people to hold. Similarly, booing and negative comments towards the nominee are drown out by shouts of support and praise for them so that there is not an image of the party not agreeing with the nominee. The topic of a third party was also discussed and the conventions basically make it so that the third party never has a chance of publicizing their candidate as much as the main two democratic and republican parties. They could never raise enough money to host a convention, and this is why that it is unlikely a third party candidate would ever win the election. This event opened my eyes to the techniques that modern politics use in order to sway voters one way or another and I think that more events like this would be beneficial to the common voter.