Election 101 — Understanding How We Vote

Introduction

In the run-up to the election, months are spent considering candidates, positions, and political parties, but it really all comes down to a single moment for each voter. The actual act of voting almost becomes an afterthought after the hoopla of the general election, but as the 2000 Election demonstrated, voting practices, efficiency, and accuracy can be incredibly important.

Fortunately, we have numerous books that explore problems with our electoral system and offer solutions. In a landmark book, The Democracy Index, Heather Gerken argues for a ranking of election practices. These rankings would “grade” districts on things like how long voters waited on line, if polling locations were adequately staffed, and whether their votes are accurately counted and making these rankings public would encourage districts to adopt best practices and improve elections. In Electronic Elections, R. Michael Alvarez & Thad E. Hall show how e-voting can work in the United States and why making it work right is essential to the future vibrancy of the democratic process.

Other books remind us that candidates aren’t the only things that appear in the voting booth (Voting the Agenda by Stephen P. Nicholson) and that elections don’t only happen on a nation-wide, or even state-wide, scale (Local Elections and the Politics of Small-Scale Democracy by J. Eric Oliver).

–Chuck Myers, group publisher in social sciences and editor in political science

Exclusive Excerpt

Click here to download an article on Democracy as a National Value

Excerpted from The Concise Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History.

Featured Book

The Democracy Index
Why Our Election System Is Failing and How to Fix It
Heather K. Gerken

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reading list

The Reading List

Electronic Elections The Perils and Promises of Digital Democracy R. Michael Alvarez & Thad E. Hall	The Democracy Index Why Our Election System Is Failing and How to Fix It Heather K. Gerken	Voting the Agenda Candidates, Elections, and Ballot Propositions Stephen P. Nicholson
Mathematics and Democracy Designing Better Voting and Fair-Division Procedures Steven J. Brams	Popular Efficacy in the Democratic Era A Reexamination of Electoral Accountability in the United States, 1828-2000 Peter F. Nardulli	Local Elections and the Politics of Small-Scale Democracy J. Eric Oliver, With Shang E. Ha & Zachary Callen
Breaking the Deadlock The 2000 Election, the Constitution, and the Courts Richard A. Posner	A Logic of Expressive Choice Alexander A. Schuessler	A Behavioral Theory of Elections Jonathan Bendor, Daniel Diermeier, David A. Siegel & Michael M. Ting

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Apr

2012

Check your References — Democracy as a National Value

by Jessica Pellien | Filed in: Election 101 - Election 101 - How We Vote - Election 101 - Reference - Twitter | 8:44am EST

As part of Election 101, we are posting exclusive content from The Concise Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History on subjects related to Election 2012.

Alexander Keyssar examines how the right to vote became a reality for every American in this fascinating article. He demonstrates that what we take for granted was hard-earned and fought for and may still need protection.

The passage of the Nineteenth Amendment was a major milestone in the history of the right to vote. Yet significant barriers to universal suffrage remained in place, and they were not shaken by either the prosperity of the 1920s or the Great Depression of the 1930s. African Americans in the South remained disfranchised, many immigrants still had to pass literacy tests, and some recipients of relief in the 1930s were threatened with exclusion because they were “paupers.” Pressures for change, however, began to build during World War II, and they intensified in the 1950s and 1960s. The result was the most sweeping transformation in voting rights in the nation’s history: almost all remaining limitations on the franchise were eliminated as the federal government overrode the long tradition of states’ rights and became the guarantor of universal suffrage. Although focused initially on African Americans in the South, the movement for change spread rapidly, touching all regions of the nation.

Not surprisingly, such a major set of changes had multiple sources.

Fast forward to the twenty-first century:

Conflict over the exercise of the right to vote could still be found in the United States more than 200 years after the nation’s founding. Indeed, the disputed presidential election of 2000, between Al Gore and George W. Bush, revolved in part around yet another dimension of the right to vote— the right to have one’s vote counted, and counted accurately. Perhaps inescapably, the breadth of the franchise, as well as the ease with which it could be exercised, remained embedded in partisan politics, in the pursuit of power in the world’s most powerful nation. The outcomes of elections mattered, and those outcomes often were determined not just by how people voted but also by who voted. The long historical record suggested that— however much progress had been achieved between 1787 and 2008— there would be no final settlement of this issue. The voting rights of at least some Americans could always be potentially threatened and consequently would always be in need of protection.

Read the complete article here: http://press.princeton.edu/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/2Voting.DemocracyasNationalValue.pdf

The preceding is an excerpt from The Concise Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History, edited by Michael Kazin, Rebecca Edwards, and Adam Rothman. To learn more about this book, please visit http://press.princeton.edu. Copyright © 2011 by Princeton University Press. No part of this text may be distributed, posted, or reproduced in any form by digital or mechanical means without prior written permission of the publisher.

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