Voting and Elections Chapter 13

Voting and Elections ✦ We will cover ✦ Political participation ✦ The purposes served by elections ✦ Different kinds of elections ✦ Presidential elections ✦ Congressional elections ✦ Voting Behavior ✦ Reforming the electoral process

Roots of American Elections part 1 ✦ Elections are responsible for most political changes in the US ✦ Regular free elections guarantee mass political action and enable citizens to influence the actions of their government

Roots of American Elections part 2 Purposes Served by Elections ✦ Most change in US comes about on the basis of elections ✦ Elections generally allow us to avoid: ✦ riots ✦ general strikes ✦ coups d’etats ✦ Elections serve ✦ to legitimate governments through the mandates of the electorate ✦ to fill public offices and organize governments ✦ to allow people with different views and policy agendas to come to power ✦ to ensure that the government remains accountable to the people

Types of Elections ✦ Primary elections can be open or closed ✦ Crossover voting or raiding can occur in open primaries ✦ Runoff primaries held if no candidate wins a majority ✦ General Elections determine who will fill public offices ✦ Ballot measures: initiative, referendum, and recall

Voting-One Form of Participation ✦ Conventional vs unconventional participation ✦ Different types of participants ✦ Factors Influencing Participation ✦ Demographic, Sociological, Psychological, Legal, Issues, Candidate

Voting Behavior ✦ Conventional political participation ✦ Attempts to influence the political process through well-accepted, often moderate forms of persuasion ✦ Unconventional political participation ✦ Attempts to influence the political process through unusual or extreme measures, such as protests, boycotts, and picketing

Initiative, Referendum, and Recall ✦ Initiative ✦ An election that allows citizens to propose legislation ad submit it to the state electorate for popular vote ✦ Referendum ✦ An election whereby the state legislature submits proposed legislation to the state’s voters for approval ✦ Recall ✦ Voters can remove an incumbent from office by popular vote ✦ Are very rare

Voting Behavior ✦ Voter Participation-Presidential elections ✦ About 40% of eligible adult population votes regularly ✦ About 25% are occasional voters ✦ About 35% rarely or never vote

Who Votes? ✦ Education ✦ Income - people with higher incomes have a higher tendency to vote ✦ Age - older people tend to vote more often than younger people (less than half of eligible year olds are registered to vote) ✦ Gender - since 1980, women have a higher tendency to vote for Democrats than Republicans ✦ Race - in general, whites tend to vote more regularly than African-Americans (this may be due to income and education rather than race)

Patterns in Vote Choice 7 factors that influence vote choice ✦ Party identification ✦ Ideology ✦ Income and education ✦ Race and ethnicity ✦ Gender ✦ Religion ✦ Issues

Patterns in Vote Choice ✦ Party: Democrats largely vote for Democrats ✦ Ticket-splitting has increased ✦ Race: minorities largely vote for Democrats ✦ Gender: women largely vote for Democrats ✦ Income: poor largely vote Democrat ✦ Ideology: liberals largely vote for Democrats ✦ Issues: prospective and retrospective judgments

Why is Turnout so Low? ✦ In 2008, 62% of eligible voters turned out ✦ Most common reason for not voting is being too busy ✦ Registration can also be an unclear process ✦ Absentee voting can be difficult ✦ There are a lot of elections ✦ People are apathetic ✦ Political parties have less influence than in earlier years

Toward Reform: Problem with Voter Turnout ✦ Voter turnout in the US is low. Why? ✦ Other commitments: People are too busy ✦ Difficulty of registration ✦ Number of elections ✦ Voter attitudes: apathy, satisfaction, lack of a pressing issue ✦ Weakened influence of political parties

Does Low Turnout Matter? ✦ Some argue it is not a critical problem ✦ Based on belief that preferences of nonvoters are not much different from those who do not vote ✦ So...results would be the same regardless ✦ Nonvoting is voluntary ✦ Nonvoting driven by acceptance of the status quo ✦ Others believe it is a problem ✦ Voters do not represent nonvoters ✦ Social make-up and attitudes of nonvoters today are significantly different from those of voters ✦ Tend to be low income, young, blue collar, less educated and more heavily minority

Does Low Voter Turnout Matter? ✦ Is low voter turnout a problem in a democracy? ✦ do we want the uninformed or poor and uneducated voting? Might they make bad decisions?

Presidential Election 2000 ✦ Al Gore (D) ✦ 50,996,116 votes ✦ 48% ✦ 21 States Won ✦ 266 Electoral Votes ✦ George W. Bush(R) ✦ 50,456,169 votes ✦ 48% ✦ 30 States Won ✦ 271 Electoral Votes ✦ Does Your Vote Matter?

Ways to Improve Voter Turnout ✦ Make Election Day a Holiday ✦ Enable Early Voting ✦ Permit Mail and Online Voting ✦ Make Registration Easier ✦ Modernize the Ballot ✦ Strengthen Parties

Nominating a President ✦ Delegates to convention chosen by election or caucus ✦ Elections may be winner-take-all or proportional ✦ Caucuses are better for the party organization ✦ Elections allow for broader participation ✦ Trend toward front-loading

Patterns of Presidential Elections ✦ Party Realignments are rare occurrences in which existing party affiliations change dramatically ✦ Secular Realignment is the gradual shifting of party coalitions ✦ Maintaining-deviating-realigning

Primaries vs Caucuses ✦ Over years, trend has been to use primaries rather than caucuses to choose delegates ✦ Caucus is the oldest, most party-oriented method of choosing delegates to the national conventions ✦ Arguments for primaries ✦ more democratic ✦ more representative ✦ a rigorous test for the candidate ✦ Arguments for caucuses ✦ caucus participants more informed; more interactive and informative ✦ unfair scheduling affects outcomes ✦ frontloading (being first in the primary calendar) gives some primary states an advantage ✦ tendency to choose an early date on the primary schedule

The Party Conventions ✦ Out-of-power party holds its convention first, in late July, followed in mid-August by party holding the presidency ✦ Conventions were decision-making body in the 19th century ✦ Today the convention is fundamentally different ✦ Nominations settled well in advance of the convention ✦ Platforms and Vice President

Electoral College ✦ The Electoral College was a compromise created by the Framers to ensure that the president was chosen intelligently and with the input of each of the states ✦ The number of electors is determined by the federal representation for each state ✦ For example, California has 52 members of the House of Representatives and 2 Senators - 54 electoral votes ✦ How many for Minnesota?

✦ Total of 538 electoral votes (535 members of Congress and 3 for the District of Columbia) ✦ Majority of 270 wins the presidency ✦ Just as George W. Bush did in 2000, a candidate can win a majority of electoral votes with a minority of popular votes and still be elected to the office

Reforming the Electoral College ✦ Three major proposals have been made ✦ Select the president by popular vote ✦ Each congressional district has a vote ✦ Keep the College, abolish the electors

Reforming the Electoral Process ✦ Focus on the Electoral College ✦ Other areas ✦ Nomination ✦ Regional primaries ✦ Campaign Finance ✦ Internet Voting/Mail ✦ Standardizing Recounts ✦ Ballot Reform

Congressional Elections ✦ In Congress, incumbency has its advantages ✦ Support from a paid staff ✦ Media and travel budgets ✦ “Scaring off” other challengers ✦ Redistricting and gerrymandering to protect incumbents

✦ In Congressional elections ✦ candidates tend to be less visible ✦ most candidates are or were state legislators ✦ name recognition is often the most important battle of the campaign ✦ candidates receive little media coverage

✦ Incumbency advantage - the electoral edge afforded to those already in office...achieved through: ✦ Higher visibility ✦ Experience ✦ Organization ✦ Fund-raising ability Incumbency

Why Incumbents Lose ✦ Redistricting can pit incumbents against one another ✦ Scandals ✦ Presidential coattails ✦ Midterm elections; president’s party usually loses seats