US Politics-Voting

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Week 2 Progressive Era Reforms

The Progressive Era (1890 – 1913) was a period of United

States (US) history that sought to curb many of the excesses of the

patronage period, including the institution of major government

reforms such as civil service. Progressives wanted to clean up

government, use government to advance human welfare and apply

scientific management theories to government.

Famously, during this era (1906), Upton Sinclair wrote The

Jungle chronicling abuses in the meat packing industry, which led

President Theodore Roosevelt to press Congress to pass laws

regulating the meat industry. In addition, Progressives had many

other successes: They attacked voting allegiances between US

Senators and the railroad industry; introduced the direct primary

(to avoid party conventions); obtained more equitable taxes;

obtained regulation of railroad rates; secured the passage of the

Sherman Anti-Trust Act; and secured the passage of the Pure Food

and Drug Law.

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Progressives were also successful at introducing the

Australian ballot, which was a secret ballot printed by the state.

Previously, parties had made the ballots and there were charges of

invasion of privacy and multiple voting. For those opposed to

machine politics, the democratic virtues of secret balloting seemed

obvious. But, the reform had the unintended consequence of

becoming an obstacle to voting for many illiterate foreign-born

voters in the North and uneducated African-Americans in the

South. In some states, this problem was remedied by having

illiterate voters assisted or by attaching party emblems next to the

names of candidates.

The situation in Southern states, however, deteriorated for

African-Americans during this era. The year 1890 marked the

beginning of efforts by southern states to disenfranchise African-

American voters. Faced with recurring electoral challenges,

annoying expense of buying votes and epidemics of fraud and

violence, Southern Democrats chose to solidify their hold over the

region by amending the state voting laws so as to exclude African-

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Americans without overtly violating the Fifteenth Amendment.

Mississippi led the way by imposing a stricter residency

requirement, a two-dollar poll tax and a literacy test that required

voters to demonstrate that they understood the Constitution. Other

southern states soon followed by including some combination of

these requirements, and eventually Democratic primaries were

restricted to only white voters. Laws were also adopted to

disenfranchise men convicted of minor offenses, such as vagrancy

and bigamy: The goal was to keep poor and illiterate minorities (in

Texas this included Mexican Americans) from the polls.

Importantly, local election officials were given a great deal of

discretion in implementing the requirements, which often worked

to the benefit of “gentlemen” whites but was harmful to the poor

and for minorities.

Sadly, these state laws worked. In Mississippi after 1890,

less than 9,000 out of 147,000 voting-age African-Americans were

registered to vote. In Louisiana, where more than 130,000

African-Americans were registered in 1896, as little as 1,342 were

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registered by 1904. Consequently, the African-American

population remained disenfranchised until the 1960s, electoral

participation was low and one-party rule by Southern Democrats

dominated southern politics.

Vote Determinants

What determines the choice a voter will select on election

day is an important question asked by many political scientists.

The most widely accepted view of what drives vote choice is party

identification. Campbell et al. (1960), in their famous work titled

The American Voter, note that “partisan preferences show great

stability between elections.” The strength and direction of party

identification are of central importance in explaining political

attitudes and behaviors (such as voting). Campbell et al., however,

caution that party identification does not fully explain vote choice,

stating “party identification could not account for all aspects of the

image formed by the public of the elements of national politics; but

it gives to this image a central partisan coherence.” Thus, other

facts likely also influence vote choice albeit to a minor extent than

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party identification, and I suggest that such factors may vary for

individuals depending on the nature of any given election.

Niemi and Weisberg draw our attention to many other factors

that can partly explain vote choice. These include the role of

incumbency, media influence, the state of the economy and group

attachments.

Achen and Bartels (2004) present a creative argument that

natural disasters, including drought, flu and shark attacks, also can

influence voter choice. The 1916 New Jersey example, involving

shark attacks, clearly included an economic harm component.

Query whether the true driver of vote choice is the voters’

assessment that the political leaders should have done more to

avoid the damage or is it the damage itself and the economic

consequences that follow from the damage. Achen and Bartels

suggest that a community’s pain and pleasure are key determinants

regardless of how much influence the incumbent really has over

the disaster.