The Beginnings: from the Colonies to the Articles of Confederation

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Voting, Campaigns and Elections
The Logic ofAmerican Politics
Chapter Eleven
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The Right to Vote

• This country did not begin with universal voting
  rights (suffrage).
  
• Only about half of the free adult male population
  was eligible to vote at the time the Constitution
  was adopted.
  
• This was based primarily on property
  requirements.
  

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The Right to Vote

• Issue How representative can a democracy be when
  not all of its people and groups are allowed to
  vote?

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The Right to Vote

• Over time, voting rights have expanded to
  virtually all adult citizens.
  
• This reflects
• the powerful appeal of democratic ideas
• profound social changes
• struggles of activists
• perpetual scramble by politicians and parties for
  more votes

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Wider Suffrage for Men

• The Revolutionary War helped expand the number of
  white males who could vote.
  
• Men who risked their lives fighting for
  independence felt entitled to full citizenship,
  regardless of property or wealth.

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Suffrage for Women the early years

• Margaret Brent asked the Maryland Council for the
  right to vote in 1647
  
• Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, John Adams,
  during the Constitutional Convention requesting
  that he remember the ladies
  
• Women from prominent families in New Jersey could
  vote until 1807 when state laws took the right
  away

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Suffrage for Women

• The womens suffrage movement grew directly out
  of the antislavery movement.
  

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Suffrage for Women

• As womens suffrage grew at the state and local
  levels, politicians competing for womens votes
  started supporting further expansion.
  

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Womens Suffrage

• The Nineteenth Amendment, adopted in 1920,
  finally guaranteed women the right to vote.
  

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Suffrage for African Americans

• Full suffrage didnt occur in practice until
  passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

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Increased Suffrage Lowering the Voting Age

• The 26th amendment (1971) lowered the
• voting age to 18.
• It was tied to the Vietnam War
• Appealed to antiwar activists because young
  people were very active in the movement
  
• Appealed to politicians supporting the war
  because it would enfranchise those fighting in
  Vietnam who (at least in theory) supported the
  war
• Used same logic as that advanced in the
  Revolutionary War why should those risking their
  lives for their country be denied the right to
  vote?

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Who Uses the Right to Vote?

• Most agree that the right to vote is essential to
  democracy.
  
• And yet millions of Americans do not vote.

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Who Uses the Right to Vote?

• Universal suffrage gives leaders a reason to care
  about peoples interests, opinions, and values.
  We want that in a representative government.
  
• But while it makes sense to demand the vote, it
  also makes sense on some levels not to use the
  right.
  

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Who Uses the Right to Vote?

• The benefits of elections are collective
  benefits.
  
• People enjoy the payoffs even if they have not
  helped to produce them by voting.
  
• Voting is costly in terms of time and opportunity
  costs
  
• A single vote is generally unlikely to make much
  of a difference
  
• And thus, U.S. elections face large free riding
  problems.
  

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Who Uses the Right to Vote?

• If it seems rational not to vote, why, then, do
  millions of Americans vote?
  
• Other considerations at stake
• sense of civic responsibility
• other social aspects

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Who Uses the Right to Vote?

• Generally, little more than half the eligible
  electorate has bothered to register and vote in
  presidential elections.
  

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Individual Factors Affecting Turnout

• Age and education have the strongest influence on
  voting
  

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Individual Factors Affecting Turnout

• People with deeper roots in their communities are
  more likely to go to the polls.
  
• Individuals with greater confidence in their own
  ability to understand and engage in politics
  (internal efficacy) are more likely to vote.
  

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Individual Factors Affecting Turnout

• Those who believe they can influence government
  decisions (external efficacy) are more likely to
  vote.
  

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Individual Factors Affecting Turnout

• Other factors
• stronger partisanship
• residing in politically active/competitive
  districts
  
• residing in areas with less restrictive
  registration requirements.
  

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Individual Factors Affecting Turnout

• The cynical and distrusting are just as likely to
  vote as everyone else.

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Summary The Non-Representative Electorate

• Wealthy, well-educated, older white people are
  over-represented among those who use the right to
  vote.
  
• The poor, uneducated, young, and nonwhite are
  underrepresented.

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Do Varying Turnout Rates Among Groups Matter?

• Depends on the extent to which these groups hold
  different opinions.

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Effects of Background on Public Opinion

• Polling data shows that opinions vary with
  demographics such as race, ethnicity, sex,
  income, education, region, religion, and age.
  

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Do Varying Turnout Rates Among Groups Matter?

• Some demographic groups do hold different
  opinions about various issues, suggesting that
  varying turnout rates could matter.
  
• However, research suggests that few if any
  presidential election results would change if
  every eligible person voted.

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Effects of Background on Public Opinion

• Politicians pay attention to differences in
  public opinion and turnout rates among groups for
  political reasons
  
• They help them develop coalition building
  strategies.
  
• They also help them target likely voters.

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The Logic of Elections

• How representative democracy promotes
  responsiveness through elections
  
• They give ordinary citizens a say in who
  represents them.
  
• The prospect of future elections gives
  officeholders who want to keep or improve their
  jobs a motive to be responsive agents.
  
• But, do Americans know enough about those
  representing them for this to work?

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The Logic of Elections

• Not everyone has to be well informed themselves
  for the system to work.
  
• Opinion leaders often keep a closer eye on
  elected officials and warn the public when they
  go astray.
  
• Voters can also rely on shorthand cues, known as
  cognitive shortcuts, to cast their votes.
  

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How Do Voters Decide?

• Casting a vote involves making a prediction about
  the future which candidate would do a better
  job.
  
• However, choosing which candidate would be best
  is sometimes difficult and filled with
  uncertainty.
  
• Acquiring full information about candidates would
  require a great deal of effort.
  
• Most voters economize by using simple cues known
  as cognitive shortcuts (see Popkin essay in
  Principles and Practice)
  
• They receive these from the free information
  delivered by the news media, campaign
  advertising, opinion leaders of various forms, as
  well as through their own experiences.

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How Do Voters Decide?

• One way is to assess the past performance of the
  incumbent candidate or the majority party.
  
• Have they done well?
• If so, they are likely to continue to receive
  support, particularly if the national economy is
  strong.
  

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How Do Voters Decide?

• Personal experience supplies useful and relevant
  political information.
  
• Are you better off today than you were four years
  ago?
  

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How Do Voters Decide?

• Another useful strategy is to compare the future
  policy options the candidates represent.
  
• This strategy is commonly used by single-issue
  voters.
  

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How Do Voters Decide?

• Voters also make predictions based on the
  candidates personal characteristics.
  
• Relevant personal considerations include
  qualities such as
  
• Competence
• Experience
• Honesty
• Knowledge
• leadership skills

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How Do Voters Decide?

• The most common cognitive shortcut voters use to
  make predictions is party label.
  
• It is useful for both performance voting and
  issue voting.
  
• Party identification is the single best predictor
  of the vote in national elections.
  

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The Role of Campaigns

• Campaigns tend to use messages that provide good
  cognitive shortcuts that favor their candidate
  and disadvantage their opponent.
  

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The Basic Necessities Candidates and Messages

• The basic necessities for a campaign are a
  candidate, a message, and a way to inform voters
  about both.
  

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Getting Out the Message

• The message is the answer to the voters
  question Why should I vote for this candidate
  rather than another?
  
• To help shape messages, campaigns increasingly
  rely on polling data and focus groups.
  
• They turn these messages into short, easily
  recallable soundbites given in candidates
  advertisements and speeches.

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Negative Campaigning

• Negative campaigning produces many complaints but
  it appears to be effective.
  

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Successful Campaigns

• A successful campaign comes down to several
  basics
  
• The goal is to win a majority of votes, not every
  vote.
  
• A campaign needs to figure out who is certain to
  support their candidate, who is up for grabs, and
  who is out of the picture.
  
• They then design the campaign to appeal to the
  first two groups, and it finds a way to frame the
  choice in a way that advantages the candidate.
  

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Successful Campaigns

• Must develop a simple, coherent campaign theme
  that explains both why the candidate should be
  elected and why the opponent should not. And
  repeat this message a lot.

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The Other Necessity Campaign Money

• A good candidate and a good message are not
  enough. Without money, the voters do not see the
  candidate or hear the message.
  

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Why Parties?

• Functions of political parties
• To build stable legislative and electoral
  alliances
  
• To mobilize voters
• To develop new electoral techniques
• To use party labels and enforce collective
  responsibility

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To Use Party Labels and Enforce Collective
Responsibility

• Parties tend to have three parts
• 1) the party in government, an alliance of
  current officeholders cooperating to shape public
  policy
  
• 2) the party organization, dedicated to electing
  the partys candidates and
  
• 3) the party in the electorate, composed of those
  voters who identify with the party and regularly
  vote for its nominees.
  

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To Build Stable Legislative and Electoral
Alliances

• The first American parties appeared in Congress
  when leaders with opposing visions of the
  national future began competing for legislative
  votes.
• In order to win, they had to obtain majority
  support for their side.
  
• Thus, political parties began in the U.S. as
  parties in government.

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To Build Stable Legislative and Electoral
Alliances

• Organized competition for votes in Congress led
  to organized competition for votes in
  congressional elections.
  
• Needed to both maintain and expand the alliances
  built in the legislature.
  
• The organizational work required to negotiate and
  maintain alliances helps expand legislative
  parties into electoral parties.
  

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To Develop New Electoral Techniques

• To win elections, parties needed to find ways to
  win votes.

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To Use Party Labels and Enforce Collective
Responsibility

• Voters need a way to distinguish among candidates
  for office.
  
• Party labels offer a shorthand cue that keeps
  voting decisions cheap and simple
  
• This helps lead to parties in the electorate

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To Use Party Labels and Enforce Collective
Responsibility

• Only works as long as the labels are informative
• The more accurately a candidates label predicts
  behavior in office, the more useful it is to
  voters, and the more it will continue to be
  used.

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To Use Party Labels and Enforce Collective
Responsibility

• Once candidates have adopted a party label,
  politicians have a personal stake in maintaining
  the value of their partys brand name.
  

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Why Parties?

• The answer is largely one of expediency.
• They emerged and persist because both politicians
  and voters find them useful.

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On your own

• Read Logic pp. 478-483 on the third party
  system.
  
• Pay special attention to the following
• What are party machines?
• What is the Australian ballot?
• How did it, along with other progressive reforms,
  undermine party machines?
  
• What were the unintended consequences of these
  progressive reforms?
  
• Wednesday The News Media Logic Chapter 14