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"The 2000 presidential election, with its problems in Florida, was not the first major vote-counting controversy in the nation's history--nor the last. Ballot Battles traces the evolution of America's experience with these disputes, from 1776 to now, explaining why they have proved persistently troublesome and offering an institutional solution"--
The 2000 presidential race resulted in the highest-profile ballot battle in over a century. But it is far from the only American election determined by a handful of votes and marred by claims of fraud. Since the founding of the nation, violence frequently erupted as the votes were being counted, and more than a few elections produced manifestly unfair results. Despite America's claim to be the world's greatest democracy, its adherence to the basic tenets of democratic elections-the ability to count ballots accurately and fairly even when the stakes are high-has always been shaky. A rigged gubernatorial election in New York in 1792 nearly ended in calls for another revolution, and an 1899 gubernatorial race even resulted in an assassination. Though acts of violence have decreased in frequency over the past century, fairness and accuracy in ballot counting nonetheless remains a basic problem in American political life. In Ballot Battles, Edward Foley presents a sweeping history of election controversies in the United States, tracing how their evolution generated legal precedents that ultimately transformed how we determine who wins and who loses. While weaving a narrative spanning over two centuries, Foley repeatedly returns to an originating event: because the Founding Fathers despised parties and never envisioned the emergence of a party system, they wrote a constitution that did not provide clear solutions for high-stakes and highly-contested elections in which two parties could pool resources against one another. Moreover, in the American political system that actually developed, politicians are beholden to the parties which they represent - and elected officials have typically had an outsized say in determining the outcomes of extremely close elections that involve recounts. This underlying structural problem, more than anything else, explains why intense ballot battles that leave one side feeling aggrieved will continue to occur for the foreseeable future. American democracy has improved dramatically over the last two centuries. But the same cannot be said for the ways in which we determine who wins the very close races. From the founding until today, there has been little progress toward fixing the problem. Indeed, supporters of John Jay in 1792 and opponents of Lyndon Johnson in the 1948 Texas Senate race would find it easy to commiserate with Al Gore after the 2000 election. Ballot Battles is not only the first full chronicle of contested elections in the US. It also provides a powerful explanation of why the American election system has been-and remains-so ineffective at deciding the tightest races in a way that all sides will agree is fair.
Democracy has never been more vulnerable. The problem is right here in America. How to Sabotage an Election Become an election judge and carry a refrigerator magnet in your pocket Program every fifth vote to automatically record for your candidate Bury your hacked code Avi Rubin, a computer scientist at Johns Hopkins and a specialist in systems security knows something the rest of us don’t. Maybe we suspected it, maybe we’ve thought it, but we didn’t have proof. Until now. The electronic voting machines being used in 37 states are vulnerable to tampering, and because the manufacturers are not required to reveal—even to the government—how they operate, voters will never know if their votes are recorded accurately. Follow Rubin on his quest to wake America up to the fact that the irregularities in the 2004 elections might not have been accidents; that there are simple solutions that election commissions are willfully ignoring; that if you voted on an electronic machine, there’s a chance you didn’t vote the way you wanted to. Learn what you can do the next time you vote to make sure that your vote is counted. Imagine for a moment that you live in a country where nobody is sure how most of the votes are counted, and there’s no reliable record for performing a recount. Imagine that machines count the votes, but nobody knows how they work. Now imagine if somebody found out that the machines were vulnerable to attack, but the agencies that operate them won’t take the steps to make them safe. If you live in America, you don’t need to imagine anything. This is the reality of electronic voting in our country. Avi Rubin is a computer scientist at Johns Hopkins University and a specialist in systems security. He and a team of researchers studied the code that operates the machines now used in 37 states and discovered the following terrifying facts: The companies hired to test the election equipment for federal certification did not study the code that operates the machines and the election commissions employed no computer security analysts. All votes are recorded on a single removable card similar to the one in a digital camera. There is no way to determine if the card or the code that operates the machine has been tampered with. It’s very easy to program a machine to change votes. There’s no way to determine if that has happened. There were enough irregularities with the electronic voting machines used throughout the 2004 election to make anyone think twice about using them again. Avi Rubin has testified at Congressional hearings trying to alert the government that it has put our democracy at risk by relying so heavily on voting machines without taking the proper precautions. As he has waged this battle, he has been attacked, undermined, and defamed by a prominent manufacturer. His job has been threatened, but he won’t give up until every citizen understands that at this moment, our democracy hangs in the balance. There are simple solutions and, before you vote in the next election, Rubin wants you to know your rights. If you don’t know them and you use an electronic voting machine, you may not be voting at all.
Illustrated in full color. Just in time for the presidential election comes Caldecott medalist Emily Arnold McCully's stirring tale of a young girl's act of bravery inspired by the great Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It is the fall of 1880, and Cordelia is more interested in horse riding than in hearing her neighbor, Mrs. Stanton talk about her fight for women's suffrage. But on Election Day, Mrs. Stanton tells the heart-wrenching story of her childhood. Charged with the story's message, Cordelia determines to go with Mrs. Stanton to the polls in an attempt to vote--above the jeers and taunts of the male crowd. With faces, landscapes, and action scenes brought to life by McCully's virtuosic illustrations, Cordelia's turning-point experience is sure to inspire today's young girls (and boys) everywhere.
The Battle Over Bilingual Ballots by James Thomas Tucker Pdf
In recent years, few federal requirements have been as controversial as the mandate for what critics call 'bilingual ballots'. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 included a permanent requirement for language assistance for Puerto Rican voters educated in Spanish and ten years later Congress banned English-only elections in certain covered jurisdictions, expanding the support to include Alaska Natives, American Indians, Asian-language voters and Spanish-language voters. Some commentators have condemned the language assistance provisions, underlying many of their attacks with anti-immigrant rhetoric. Although the provisions have been in effect for over three decades, until now no comprehensive study of them has been published. This book describes the evolution of the provisions, examining the evidence of educational and voting discrimination against language minorities covered by the Act. Additional chapters discuss the debate over the 2006 amendments to the Voting Rights Act, analysis of objections raised by opponents of bilingual ballots and some of the most controversial components of these requirements, including their constitutionality, cost and effectiveness. Featuring revealing case studies as well as analysis of key data, this volume makes a persuasive and much-needed case for bilingual ballots, presenting a thorough investigation of this significant and understudied area of election law and American political life.
Battle for the Ballot by Carol Cornwall Madsen Pdf
This complex story of women's battle for the ballot in Utah has been interpreted from diverse perspectives. Carol Cornwall Madsen has compiled the best current scholarship and writing on the topic. Together, these essays both represent well the varied points of view of scholars and provide a full history of woman suffrage in Utah.
Dangerous Democracy? by Larry Sabato,Bruce A. Larson,Howard R. Ernst Pdf
Direct democracy is growing in the form of statewide ballot initiatives. This work assesses the health of the intitiative process through the insights of initiative scholars, journalists, and political consultants across America.
Author : Brian D. Behnken Publisher : Univ of North Carolina Press Page : 369 pages File Size : 49,6 Mb Release : 2011 Category : History ISBN : 9780807834787
Fighting Their Own Battles by Brian D. Behnken Pdf
Between 1940 and 1975, African Americans and Mexican Americans in Texas fought a number of battles in court, at the ballot box, in schools, and on the streets to eliminate segregation and state-imposed racism. Although both groups engaged in civil rights
For African American women, the fight for the right to vote was only one battle. This Coretta Scott King Author Honor Book and National Book Award longlisted work tells the important, overlooked story of black women as a force in the suffrage movement—when fellow suffragists did not accept them as equal partners in the struggle. Susan B. Anthony. Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Alice Paul. The Women's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls. The 1913 Women's March in D.C. When the epic story of the suffrage movement in the United States is told, the most familiar leaders, speakers at meetings, and participants in marches written about or pictured are generally white. That's not the real story. Women of color, especially African American women, were fighting for their right to vote and to be treated as full, equal citizens of the United States. Their battlefront wasn't just about gender. African American women had to deal with white abolitionist-suffragists who drew the line at sharing power with their black sisters. They had to overcome deep, exclusionary racial prejudices that were rife in the American suffrage movement. And they had to maintain their dignity--and safety--in a society that tried to keep them in its bottom ranks. Lifting as We Climb is the empowering story of African American women who refused to accept all this. Women in black church groups, black female sororities, black women's improvement societies and social clubs. Women who formed their own black suffrage associations when white-dominated national suffrage groups rejected them. Women like Mary Church Terrell, a founder of the National Association of Colored Women and of the NAACP; or educator-activist Anna Julia Cooper who championed women getting the vote and a college education; or the crusading journalist Ida B. Wells, a leader in both the suffrage and anti-lynching movements. Author Evette Dionne, a feminist culture writer and the editor-in-chief of Bitch Media, has uncovered an extraordinary and underrepresented history of black women. In her powerful book, she draws an important historical line from abolition to suffrage to civil rights to contemporary young activists—filling in the blanks of the American suffrage story.
Youth's Battle for the Ballot by Wendell W. Cultice Pdf
This is the first full history dealing with the voting age in the United States from 1607 to 1991 that shows how military service and suffrage have been linked through the years. Although the study points to standards regarding the right to vote back to Athens and Rome and to Europe in the Middle Ages, the account focuses on contemporary America and reviews federal and state action up to the ratification of the 26th Amendment giving 18-year-olds the right to vote. This popularly written study is designed for students of government and for broad audiences in college, university, high school, and public libraries. This history of the voting age in the United States covers the military influence on the ballot box from 1607 to 1941; Congressional concerns from 1941 to 1952; public and political debates across the nation from 1953 to 1960; the mobilization of the young from 1961 to 1969; and executive, legislative, and court action in 1970 and 1971 leading up to the ratification of the 26th Amendment. The study provides an overview of the youth vote since 1971 and points to voting experiences in Australia, Canada, England, and New Zealand. A short summary is provided at the end of the book, along with a list of references, and a general index.
The Battle for the Black Ballot by Charles L. Zelden Pdf
The history of voting rights in America is a checkerboard marked by dogged progress against persistent prejudice toward an expanding inclusiveness. The Supreme Court decision in Smith v. Allwright is a crucial chapter in that broader story and marked a major turning point for the modern civil rights movement. Charles Zelden's concise and thoughtful retelling of this episode reveals why. Denied membership in the Texas Democratic Party by popular consensus, party rules, and (from 1923 to 1927) state statutes, Texas blacks were routinely turned away from voting in the Democratic primary in the first decades of the twentieth century. Given that Texas was a one-party state and that the primary effectively determined who held office, this meant the total exclusion of Texas blacks from the political process. This practice went unchecked until 1940, when Lonnie Smith, a black dentist from Houston, fought his exclusion by election judge S. E. Allwright in the 1940 Democratic Primary. Defeated in the lower courts, Smith finally found justice in the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled 8-1 that the Democratic Party and its primary were not "private and voluntary" and, thus, were duly bound by constitutional protections governing the electoral process and the rights of all citizens. While the initial impetus of the case may have been the wish of one man to exercise his right to vote, the real meaning of Smith's challenge to the Texas all white primary lies at the heart of the entire civil rights revolution. One of the first significant victories for the NAACP's newly formed Legal Defense Fund against Jim Crow segregation, it provided the conceptual foundation which underlay Thurgood Marshall's successful arguments in Brown v. Board of Education. It was also viewed by Marshall, looking back on a long and storied career, as one of his most important personal victories. As Zelden shows, the Smith decision attacked the intractable heart of segregation, as it redrew the boundary between public and private action in constitutional law and laid the groundwork for many civil rights cases to come. It also redefined the Court's involvement in what had been a hands-off area of "political questions" and foreshadowed its participation in voter reapportionment cases. A landmark case in the evolution of Southern race relations and politics and for voting rights in general, Smith also provides a telling example of how the clash between national concerns and local priorities often acts as a lightning rod for resolving controversial issues. Zelden's lucid account of the controversies and conflicts surrounding Smith should refine and reinvigorate our understanding of a crucial moment in American history.
In 1917, women won the vote in New York State. Suffrage and the City explores how activists in New York City were instrumental in achieving this milestone. Santangelo uncovers the ways in which the demand for women's rights intersected with the history, politics, and culture of New York City in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. The fight for the vote in the nation's largest metropolis demanded that suffragists both mobilize and contest urban etiquette, as they worked to gain visibility and underscore their cause's respectability. From the Polo Grounds to the Lower East Side, organizers championed political equality to anyone who would listen in the early twentieth century. Their Fifth Avenue parades showcased the various Manhattan subcultures, including industrial laborers, teachers, nurses, and even socialites, that they transformed into a broad coalition by the 1910s. Films and newspapers broadcasted their tactics to rest of the country, just as the national suffrage organization decided to draw on Gotham's resources by moving its own headquarters to midtown and thereby turning Manhattan into the movement's capital. The city's mores, rhythms, and physical layout helped to shape what was possible for organizers campaigning within it. At the same time, suffragists helped to redefine the urban experience for white, middle-class women. Combining urban studies, geography, and gender and political history, Suffrage and the City demonstrates that the Big Apple was more than just a stage for suffrage action; it was part of the drama. As much as enfranchisement was a political victory in New York State, it was also a uniquely urban and cultural one.
For nearly 150 years, American women did not have the right to vote. On August 18, 1920, they won that right, when the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified at last. To achieve that victory, some of the fiercest, most passionate women in history marched, protested, and sometimes even broke the law—for more than eight decades. From Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who founded the suffrage movement at the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, to Sojourner Truth and her famous “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech, to Alice Paul, arrested and force-fed in prison, this is the story of the American women’s suffrage movement and the private lives that fueled its leaders’ dedication. Votes for Women! explores suffragists’ often powerful, sometimes difficult relationship with the intersecting temperance and abolition campaigns, and includes an unflinching look at some of the uglier moments in women’s fight for the vote. By turns illuminating, harrowing, and empowering, Votes for Women! paints a vibrant picture of the women whose tireless battle still inspires political, human rights, and social justice activism.
From the Bullet to the Ballot by Jakobi Williams Pdf
In this comprehensive history of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party (ILBPP), Chicago native Jakobi Williams demonstrates that the city's Black Power movement was both a response to and an extension of the city's civil rights movement. Williams focuses on the life and violent death of Fred Hampton, a charismatic leader who served as president of the NAACP Youth Council and continued to pursue a civil rights agenda when he became chairman of the revolutionary Chicago-based Black Panther Party. Framing the story of Hampton and the ILBPP as a social and political history and using, for the first time, sealed secret police files in Chicago and interviews conducted with often reticent former members of the ILBPP, Williams explores how Hampton helped develop racial coalitions between the ILBPP and other local activists and organizations. Williams also recounts the history of the original Rainbow Coalition, created in response to Richard J. Daley's Democratic machine, to show how the Panthers worked to create an antiracist, anticlass coalition to fight urban renewal, political corruption, and police brutality.