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