Ballot Blocked shows how the divergent trajectories of legislation, administration, and judicial interpretation in voting rights policymaking derive largely from efforts by conservative politicians to narrow the scope of federal enforcement while at the same time preserving their public reputations as supporters of racial equality and minority voting rights. Jesse H. Rhodes argues that conservatives adopt a paradoxical strategy in which they acquiesce to expansive voting rights protections in Congress (where decisions are visible and easily traceable) while simultaneously narrowing the scope of federal enforcement via administrative and judicial maneuvers (which are less visible and harder to trace). Over time, the repeated execution of this strategy has enabled a conservative Supreme Court to exercise preponderant influence over the scope of federal enforcement.
The most important element in every election is getting voters to the polls--these get-out-the-vote (GOTV) efforts make the difference between winning and losing office. With the first three editions of Get Out the Vote, Donald P. Green and Alan S. Gerber broke ground by introducing a new scientific approach to the challenge of voter mobilization and profoundly transformed how campaigns operate. Get Out the Vote has become the reference text for those who manage campaigns and study voter mobilization. In this expanded and updated edition, Green and Gerber incorporate data from a trove of recent studies that shed new light on the cost-effectiveness and efficiency of various campaign tactics, including door-to-door canvassing, e-mail, direct mail, and telephone calls. The new edition gives special attention to "relational organizing" through friend-to-friend communication and events. Available in time for the 2020 presidential campaign, this practical guide to voter mobilization will again be a must-read for consultants, candidates, and grassroots organizations.
In this groundbreaking narrative history, Ari Berman charts both the transformation of American democracy under the VRA and the counterrevolution that has sought to limit voting rights, from 1965 to the present day.
This book explores how the United States institutions of democracy have affected a citizen's ability to participate in politics.
Language Assistance under the Voting Rights Act provides an interesting and unique approach to the problem of translating minority language ballots and evaluating the causes and effects of differences in the translated ballot language. As a whole, this book demonstrates the strong relationship between accessibility, state policy, and the role this has on participation among minority language voters, particularly in the area of direct democracy.
What are the voting behaviors of the various minority groups in the United States and how will they shape the elections of tomorrow? This book explores the history of minority voting blocs and their influence on future American elections.
From the New York Times bestselling author of White Rage, the startling history of voter suppression in America, from the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to the present-day rise of legislated voter discrimination, and the forces that are fighting back. In her New York Times bestselling White Rage, Carol Anderson laid bare an insidious history of policies that have systematically aimed at impeding black progress in America, from 1865 to our combustible present. With One Person, No Vote, she chronicles a related history- the rollbacks to African American participation in the democratic vote since the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which hindered politicians in racist counties and states from diminishing the electoral strength of African Americans and Latinos at the polls.
This book's argument adds a fresh and uncompromising perspective to voting ethics literature, which is dominated by views that reject the morality and rationality of voting. Maskivker's line of reasoning contends that the duty to vote is a "duty of common pursuit," which helps society to achieve good governance. She compares voting to Samaritan justice, showing that the same duty of assistance that would compel us to help a stranger in need also obligates us to vote to save our fellow citizens from injustice at the hands of bad or even evil leaders.The book further explores issues of voter incompetence, and how citizens' ignorance can be partly overcome through political reform.
The New York Times bestselling author of The Case for Impeachment shows that gerrymandering and voter suppression have a long history.
"Important and engaging" --The Washington Post From the president of NYU's Brennan Center for Justice and the author of The Second Amendment, the history of the long struggle to win voting rights for all citizens.
The Politics of Voter Suppression arrives in time to assess actual practices at the polls this fall and to reengage with debates about voter suppression tactics such as requiring specific forms of identification. Tova Andrea Wang examines the history of how U.S. election reforms have been manipulated for partisan advantage and establishes a new framework for analyzing current laws and policies.
On June 25, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Shelby County v. Holder, invalidating a key provision of voting rights law. The decision--the culmination of an eight-year battle over the power of Congress to regulate state conduct of elections--marked the closing of a chapter in American politics. That chapter had opened a century earlier in the case of Guinn v. United States, which ushered in national efforts to knock down racial barriers to the ballot. A detailed and timely history, The Rise and Fall of the Voting Rights Act analyzes changing legislation and the future of voting rights in the United States.
Drawing on hundreds of diaries and letters of diverse young Americans--from barmaids to belles, sharecroppers to cowboys--this book explores how exuberant young people and scheming party bosses relied on each other from the 1840s to the turn of the twentieth century. It also explains why this era ended so dramatically and asks if aspects of that strange period might be useful today.
The Voting Rights War tells the story of the courageous struggle to achieve voting equality through more than one hundred years of work by the NAACP at the Supreme Court.
In contrast to the anxiety surrounding our voting system, with stories about voter suppression and manipulation, there are actually quite a few positive initiatives toward voting rights reform. Professor Joshua A. Douglas, an expert on our electoral system, examines these encouraging developments in this inspiring book about how regular Americans are working to take back their democracy, one community at a time. Told through the narratives of those working on positive voting rights reforms, Douglas includes chapters on expanding voter eligibility, easing voter registration rules, making voting more convenient, enhancing accessibility at the polls, providing voters with more choices, finding ways to comply with voter ID rules, giving redistricting back to the voters, pushing back on big money through local and state efforts, using journalism to make the system more accountable, and improving civics education. At the end, the book includes an appendix that lists organizations all over the country working on these efforts. Unusually accessible for a lay audience and thoroughly researched, this book gives anyone fed up with our current political environment the ideas and tools necessary to affect change in their own communities.
For decades, journalists have called the winners of U.S. presidential elections-often in error-well before the closing of the polls. In Votes That Count and Voters Who Don't, Sharon E. Jarvis and Soo-Hye Han investigate what motivates journalists to call elections before the votes have been tallied and, more importantly, what this and similar practices signal to the electorate about the value of voter participation.
By highlighting the origination and evolution of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Voting Rights under Fire: The Continuing Struggle for People of Color demonstrates the still-prevalent issues around voting and people of color.
This timely book provides a thought-provoking discussion of issues that influence voter registration and turnout in contemporary America. Elections not only determine who will fill an office; they have a lot to say about how the democratic process works--or doesn't work--in 21st-century America. This fascinating book sheds light on that question by focusing on factors that currently shape elections and political participation in the United States.
For nearly 200 years, Americans have pinned the democratic character of their system on elections. In many ways, we have become an election-crazed nation, ever-hoping that the next grand contest or the next great candidate will save the day. But tectonic shifts abound - changes that are distorting the nature of the process. From the rise of fear-centered partisanship, new limits on voter access to the polls, the omnipotence of social media, declining standards of objectivity, Russian interference, the reemergence of the partisan press, the growing weight of elites and more, elections - our "grand democratic feasts" - are transforming before our eyes. We've reached a precarious intersection, and it is no stretch to say the future of the republic is at stake. Written by one of the nation's leading parties and elections scholars, Why Vote? Essential Questions About the Future of Elections in America explores a range of topics. Each chapter is set by a guiding question, and concludes with a novel, often surprising argument. Who or what is to blame for the rise of rabid, hate-centered polarization? Can a third party really save our system? Should we even try to limit money in campaigns? Do elections stifle other, more potent forms of engagement? Who's to blame for the growing number of voter access restrictions? Might attitudes toward immigration and race form a "unified theory" of voter coalitions? This lively, accessible book is sure to inspire robust discussion and debate. The election process in the United States is coming apart at the seams, and Why Vote? tees up a new way of thinking about the future. This book will be of particular interest to students and scholars of US politics and elections, and to general interest readers. estion, and concludes with a novel, often surprising argument. Who or what is to blame for the rise of rabid, hate-centered polarization? Can a third party really save our system? Should we even try to limit money in campaigns? Do elections stifle other, more potent forms of engagement? Who's to blame for the growing number of voter access restrictions? Might attitudes toward immigration and race form a "unified theory" of voter coalitions? This lively, accessible book is sure to inspire robust discussion and debate. The election process in the United States is coming apart at the seams, and Why Vote? tees up a new way of thinking about the future. This book will be of particular interest to students and scholars of US politics and elections, and to general interest readers.
