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Chapter 6
Voting
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History of the Franchise
• In 1824 – Andrew Jackson and his supporters
pushed for electoral reform.
– Six of 24 states did not allow voters to pick their
presidential electors.
– By 1828 this number went down to 2, and voting
tripled to 56 percent of the adult male population.
– Voting turnout remained low due to property
requirements. Poor excluded from voting and some
religious requirements continued until 1830s.
– 1850s: qualifications included being a taxpayer
– Not until late 1850s was universal white male suffrage
achieved.
Pearson Education, Inc. © 2005
Pearson Education, Inc. © 2005
Voting Rights in the Amendment Process
• Series of constitutional amendments
expanded electoral access
– By 1960s most Americans of voting age held
the legal right to participate in federal
elections.
– The 15th Amendment (1870) extended the
franchise to black males, but many could not
exercise this vote in parts of the South.
– Voting Rights Act reestablished federal
oversight of southern elections.
Pearson Education, Inc. © 2005
Pearson Education, Inc. © 2005
Voting Rights in the Amendment Process
• Women’s suffrage also slow
process
– Wyoming allowed women to
vote in national elections in
1890.
– Eleven other states gave
women the right to vote by
1916. Most were western
states.
– In 1920 the 19th
Amendment gave women
the right to vote in every
state.
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Stanton and Anthony, National
Archives, 1180-1920
Voting Rights in the Amendment Process
• The 23rd Amendment in 1961
– Granted residents of Washington, D.C. the right to
vote for presidential electors
• The 26th Amendment in 1971
– Guaranteed voting rights to those under 21 (Note that
states could use a lower age limit if they chose.)
– Signed into law by Nixon
• Trend: steady, yet uneven expansion of vote
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How Voting Rights Spread
• Voting rights left up to separate states, which extended
suffrage in different ways at different times
• Politics of voting expansion
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Woodrow Wilson and women’s suffrage
His opponent supported it.
Women could vote in the West.
Wilson could not afford to surrender the West to Hughes so he
adopted a moderate stance on women’s suffrage.
– Women’s suffrage began to look inevitable so other politicians
jumped on the bandwagon.
• France: 1945
• Switzerland: Last canton in 1990.
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Why People Participate
• Extending suffrage has not led to increased voter
participation.
• Presidential elections
– Half of the electorate stays home.
• Voting is costly. What are some of these?
• But there are benefits, too. What are some of
these?
• Today, most of the benefits are psychological.
– Civic duty to vote
• Voter mobilization can matter.
– Efforts of parties, groups, and activists to encourage
turnout
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International Comparisons
• Americans vote at much lower levels than
people in most other countries.
• The measurement of turnout varies.
• Here:
– Number of people voting for president / number of
people in voting-age population
• Undervote:
– Ballots that indicate no choice for an office whether
because the voter abstained or because the voter’s
intention could not be determined
Pearson Education, Inc. © 2005
Pearson Education, Inc. © 2005
International Comparisons
• Overvote:
– Ballots that have more than one choice for an office,
whether because the voter voted for more than one
candidate or wrote in a name as well as making a
mark
• Voting-age population:
– All the people in the U.S. over the age of 18, including
those who may not be legally eligible to vote
• All of these things contribute to the
underestimation of voters.
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Personal Costs and Benefits: Registration
• Other countries use a different denominator in
their turnout calculations.
• The denominator is registered population.
• More than 30% of the American voting-age
population has not registered.
• When U.S. voting is calculated this way, we
move to the middle of turnout for industrial
democracies.
• But registration is also automatic in most of the
world.
• Probably would not erase the participation gap
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Personal Costs and Benefits: Compulsion
• Some countries attach costs to nonvoting.
• Compulsory in some countries.
– Australia and Belgium – fine nonvoters
– Greek electoral law provides for imprisonment of
nonvoters for up to 12 months (rarely applied).
– Italy – no fine, but DID NOT VOTE is stamped on
their identification papers. They also have their names
posted on community bulletin boards.
• Compulsion raises turnout by about 15 percent
more than in democracies without it.
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Other Personal Costs and Benefits
• Elections traditionally held on Tuesdays
• Other countries hold them on Sundays or
make the election day a holiday.
• Italian workers receive free train fare back
to their place of registration.
• In the U.S., we vote many times during the
course of a four year period.
• Being registered to vote also means being
registered for JURY DUTY.
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Mobilization and Turnout
• American parties have declined as mobilizing
agents.
• Interest groups act as mobilizing agents, but
they are not as deeply rooted in American
politics.
• Overall, weaker mobilization efforts depress
turnout by about 10 percent.
• Therefore, it costs more to vote in the U.S. and
individuals receive less support for voting than
citizens in other countries.
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Pearson Education, Inc. © 2005
Why Has American Turnout Declined?
• Puzzle: Why has turnout declined when developments
have led us to expect an increase in turnout?
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Voting Rights Act
24th Amendment
Poll taxes and literacy tests abolished
Shortened state and local residency requirements
Simplified registration
Bilingual ballots
Easier absentee voting
Socioeconomic changes – Younger people don’t vote as much,
but educated people do. While we have a younger electorate we
have a much more educated electorate.
– So why the decline??????
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Why Has American Turnout Declined?
• Declining Personal Benefits
• Declining Mobilization
• Declining Social Connectedness
– Compositional effect: an aggregate change that
results from a change in the group’s composition, not
from a change in the behavior of individuals in the
group.
– Social connectedness: the degree to which
individuals are integrated into society – families,
churches, neighborhoods, groups and so forth
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Who Votes and Who Doesn’t?
• People differ in
– their ability to bear the costs of voting
– their strength of civic duty
– how often they are targets of mobilization
• Highly-educated people are more likely to vote
than those without formal education. Whites tend
to be more highly-educated.
• Turnout increases with age until very old age
reverses the trend.
• In other countries, there is not the strong
relationship between socioeconomic
characteristics and turnout.
Pearson Education, Inc. © 2005
Pearson Education, Inc. © 2005
Is Low Turnout a Problem?
• 3 arguments say it is not.
– High turnout related to strife and conflict. If relatively
no conflict, we should expect low turnout.
– Quality of electoral decisions is higher if a special
effort is not made to increase turnout. On average,
nonvoters are less educated than voters.
– Elections are charades. Real decisions are made by
elites. Voting is solely to placate the masses. So
elections do not matter. There is very little evidence
to support this argument.
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Is Low Turnout A Problem?
• 3 arguments say it is.
– Voters are unrepresentative so elections are biased
and thus public policies that are adopted are biased
as well. Research says this argument is overstated.
Why?
• Policy views and candidate preferences of voters and
nonvoters appear to differ relatively little.
– Low turnout reflects phony politics because the party
system does not address “real” issues of concern to
people. Phony issues are flag burning, gun control,
school prayer. Real issues are jobs, education,
housing, healthcare.
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Is Low Turnout A Problem?
– Lower turnout discourages individual
development. Participation in democratic
politics stimulates people to become better
citizens and better human beings. So they
take politics to a higher level.
– What do you think? Is low turnout a cause for
concern? A cause for despair?
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Beyond the Voting Booth
• Citizens participate beyond the voting booth.
– Americans are more likely than many to work in
campaigns, contact public officials, volunteer for work
in their community.
– Contribute money to candidates, attend local board
meetings, and engage in political protest
– So why are these means of participation sometimes
more attractive than voting?
– Often for the same reasons that voter turnout is low.
Pearson Education, Inc. © 2005
Pearson Education, Inc. © 2005