Chapter 7
PARTICIPATION
AND VOTING
WSU Essay #4
Political Participation
• What are several factors political scientists
believe are responsible for low voter turnout
on election day in America?
• What tangible factors make voting in America
challenging at best? Discuss four of those
factors that are real barriers to voting.
2
Reasons people don’t vote
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Low politically efficacy.
Political parties are not the mobilizing force they used to be
Individuals do not perceive personal benefits from voting
Elections are now less competitive; incumbents get re-elected, so why vote?
Recent younger generations have not acquired the habit of voting in the way that earlier
generations did; thus, as older voting people die off, they are being replaced by younger
nonvoters, which lowers turnout rate
Lack of social connectedness—individuals not so integrated into society through extended
families, neighborhoods, religious organizations and the like as they used to be
Individuals of lower socio-economic standing vote in low proportions to their numbers
No interest in the election.
History of the franchise in the US. Recognition that voting and registration are easier than ever
today—motor-voter registration; registering with people who are empowered to register
voters; individuals can request an advance mail-in ballot, so they can avoid the voting lines on
election day.
Exceeds expectations
Student addresses 7-9 of these points
Meet expectations
student addresses 4-6 of these points
Does NOT meet expectation
student addresses fewer than 4 of these points
3
Chapter 7 - Scenario 1:
Read the Introduction on
page 207-208. Based on
what you already know or
have read, what is your
opinion of the TEA Party?
4
Democracy and Political
Participation
 Democratic ideal is “government run by
the people”
 Difficulty lies with definitions of how much
and what kind of participation needed
 Direct democracy versus democracy carried
out by representatives
 Elections necessary for democracy, but do
not ensure democracy
 Elections in former Soviet Union, but not a democracy
5
Quick Discussion
 Brainstorm
with someone next to you:
 What are some common ways people
participate in their government?
 What are some more uncommon
behaviors in which people participate in
their government?
6
Political Participation
 All citizen activities that attempt to
influence government’s structure, selection
of officials, or policies
 Conventional participation
 Common/routine behavior: campaigning, voting, writing
letters
 Unconventional participation
 Uncommon behavior, challenges/defies establishment: sit
down strikes, preventing entrance outside abortion clinic
7
Unconventional Participation
 Can range from protest marches to
terrorist activities
 1995 bombing of Oklahoma City’s Federal
Building by Timothy McVeigh
 Terrorist attacks on New York City and
Washington, D.C. on September 11, 2001
 Nidal Hasan – 2009 shot 13 at Ft. Hood
 Terrorists do not seek to participate in govt but to destroy it.
8
Unconventional Participation
March 7, 2010:
Thousands marched
across a bridge
outside Selma,
Alabama to
commemorate the
“Bloody Sunday” 45
years earlier in 1965
when people were
beaten during a voting
rights protest.
Unconventional participation because
marching 50 miles is not common.
9
Support for Unconventional
Participation
Boston Tea Party in 1773 first of many
violent protests
 Most Americans not willing to participate
in unconventional political activities
 Sometimes difficult to define which
activities fall under heading of
“unconventional political participation”

 Demonstrations and boycotts difficult to decide whether
conventional or unconventional.
10
Figure 7.1
What Americans Think Is
Conventional Behavior
A survey presented Americans with three forms of political participation outside the
electoral process and asked them if they have done, might do, or would never do
any of them. People overwhelmingly approved of signing petitions. Attending
demonstrations (a Constitutional right), would never be done by 30%. Boycotts
was less objectionable and more widely practiced. According to this survey,
demonstrations and boycotts are only marginally conventional forms of political
11
participation.
Anti-war protest - 1968 - in Chicago. Most viewers condemned the
demonstrators, not the police.
12
The Effectiveness of
Unconventional Participation

Unconventional participation not always
successful, even when violent. But does it
work?
 Yes, sometimes.
LBJ didn’t seek reelection 1968
Military draft ended 1973
Helped 26th Amendment 1971
Obamacare public disapproval rose 29% to 53% between April –
Dec. 2009
 Montgomery busy boycott (Rosa Parks) sparked civil rights
movement
 Civil rights laws




13
The Effectiveness of
Unconventional Participation



Direct action (Assembling crowds to confront
business/government) appeals most to persons who
distrust the political system and have a strong sense
of political efficacy
Participation also depends on an individual’s group
consciousness: identification with their group and its
objectives
Americans about as likely to participate as citizens of
other nations
14
 Do
you think Americans are more or
less apathetic when it comes to
participating in politics than other
countries?
15
Compared with What? Popular
Participation in Politics
Compared with 8 other
nations, Americans are not
noticeably apathetic when it
comes to politics.
Americans much less likely
to join demonstrations.
16
The Effectiveness of
Unconventional Participation
The 1943 Norman Rockwell painting “Freedom of Speech” during the WWII
era was idealized. But it still reflected civility in exercising freedom of speech
that seems absent today. Consider the August 2009 photo of Representative
John Dingell’s (D) town hall meeting in Michigan to discuss health care.
17
Antiwar Protest, 2009
On December 1, 2009, President Obama announced that he was sending
an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. On December 2, scattered
protests against his action broke out across the nation. This march
occurred in Minneapolis. Like the 1968 Vietnam antiwar protests, the 2009
protests were fueled by young people. Perhaps because the males were
not threatened by the military draft, the 2009 protests were milder.
18
Conventional Participation
 Practical test for democracy:
can
citizens influence policies by acting
through its institutions?
 Meeting with officials, supporting candidates, voting
 If people must operate outside institutions,
it is not democratic.
 The less that participants anticipate a
threat, the more likely the protest will be
conventional.
19
 Two major categories for conventional
participation:
 Supportive behavior
 Influencing behavior
20
Supportive Behavior
 Actions that express allegiance to
country and government
 Pledge, flying flag, voting, organizing
holiday parade, working voting polls
 Sometimes actions an individual sees as
supportive actually suppress democracy
21
Influencing Behavior


Some types of behavior seek benefits; others
have broad policy objectives
Particular benefits - those that benefit self,
immediate family, or friends
 Very common at local level, especially “contacting
behavior;” may require little initiative
 Removing a dead tree, dealing with a dangerous dog, getting a park
 More common with those of higher socioeconomic
status
 NIMBY – Not In My Back Yard
 Campaign contributions also on this list

Particular benefits = democratic since it
encourages participation.
Gitmo Prisoners:
NIMBY!
22
Influencing Behavior
 Broad Policy Objectives – activities that
influence selection of government
officials and policies
 Also require different levels of initiative
 Low initiative: voting, wearing candidate’s shirt, visiting
candidate’s website
 Higher initiative: running for office, holding meetings,
working on campaigns, attending hearings, or using the
court system
23
The Twitter Revolution
After the June 2009 election in
Iran, President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad was declared
reelected with 62 percent of the
votes—avoiding a runoff by
winning more than 50 percent.
Outside observers supported
claims of massive voting fraud.
Popular protests spread across
the country, especially in Tehran,
and were brutally put down.
People captured the beatings on
their cell phones, transmitted the
images to Western media, and
tweeted about the brutality. For
the week of June 15–19, the
tracking site TweetMeme
reported that 98 percent of the
links on Twitter were about Iran.
Tweeting became a new form of
political activity.
24
Influencing Behavior

Citizens who want to participate can do so
via the Internet
 Comment on proposed rules and regulations at
the Federal Register site: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/fr/
 Track economic stimulus funds at:
http://www.recovery.gov/Pages/home.aspx
 View congressional voting records:
http://www.govtrack.us/ or http://www.thomas.gov/
 Many other political sites available for wide
range of interests
25
Conventional Participation
in America
 Usually only those with a stake in the
outcome take high initiative to participate in
Congressional or administrative hearings
 Most common form of political behavior
is voting
 Rate of voting is voter turnout
 U.S. voter turnout low compared to other
industrialized democracies
26
Participating Through Voting
Electoral process heart of democratic
government
 Rules for suffrage, or franchise, and rules
for counting ballots and electoral systems
define process

 Who can vote
 How much each vote counts
 How many votes needed to win

No nation has universal suffrage
27
Expansion of Suffrage
 U.S. first to hold mass elections, but
suffrage limited by states
 Initially only landowners or taxpayers
 By 1850s, all working-class males
 Suffrage for blacks and women took longer
28
The Enfranchisement of Blacks

Even with passage of Fifteenth
Amendment after Civil War, some states
resisted
 Poll taxes, literacy tests, “white primary,”
and violence all deterrents
 Supreme Court rulings supporting black
suffrage began with Smith v. Allwright
(1944) (White primaries outlawed)
 Later Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections (1966)
ended poll taxes
 Voting Rights Act of 1965
 Ended voting tests & registered voters in southern
states
29
Figure 7.2
Voter Registration in the South, 1960,
1980, and 2000
As a result of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and other national actions, black voter
registration in the eleven states of the old Confederacy nearly doubled between 1960
and 1980. In 2000, there was very little difference between the voting registration
rates of white and black voters in the Deep South.
30
The Enfranchisement of
Women

Women could not vote
anywhere in world until
1869
 First to grant women vote in
U.S.: Wyoming Territory in
1869
 Equal Rights Party formed in
1884 – first female
presidential candidate
 Women gained national right
to vote in 1920 with
Nineteenth Amendment
31
The Fight for Women’s
Suffrage…and Against It
Militant suffragettes demonstrated outside the White House prior to ratification of the
Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which gave women the right to vote.
Congress passed the proposed amendment in 1919, and it was ratified by the
required number of states in time for the 1920 presidential election. Suffragettes’
demonstrations were occasionally disrupted by men—and other women—who
32
opposed extending the right to vote to women.
Evaluating the Expansion of
Suffrage in America
 Last major expansion was 26th
Amendment in 1971
 Lowered voting age to 18
 Though process towards generally
universal suffrage slow, U.S. still ahead
of many other countries, including other
democracies
33
Interesting Suffrage Facts
From Around the World
Women equal voting with men in: Norway
1921, Japan 1946, Switzerland 1971.
 Women can’t vote in national elections in
Saudi Arabia
 Blacks couldn’t vote freely in South Africa
until 1994.
 34 countries set voting age at 21. Fewer
than a dozen allow under 18 to vote
 Overall, U.S. historically is about as good
as other countries voting rights

34
Voting on Policies


Political power comes with suffrage
Progressivism flourished from 1900 to 1925;
proposed several electoral changes:
 Direct primary: preliminary election where voters choose party’s candidates for
2003
general election
 Recall: removing an elected official from office. 20 states have this but rarely used
 Referendum: election on a policy issue.
 Initiative: voters can propose an issue to be decided by legislature or referendum. Needs
signatures of registered voters (usually 5-10%) and then petition. 24 states have this.

Not clear if these opportunities improve
policies made by elected representatives
See page 227
35
Figure 7.3
This map shows quite clearly
the western basis of the
initiative, referendum, and
recall mechanisms intended to
place government power
directly in the hands of the
people. Advocates of ‘‘direct
legislation’’ sought to bypass
entrenched powers in state
legislatures. Established
groups and parties in the East
dismissed them as radicals
and cranks, but they gained
the support of farmers and
miners in the Midwest and
West. The Progressive forces
usually aligned with
Democrats in western state
legislatures to enact their
proposals, often against
Republican opposition.
Westward Ho!
36
Voting for Candidates

Serves democratic government two ways:
 Voters can choose candidate they think will
best represent their interests
 Voting allows citizens to re-elect candidates
or vote them out of office
U.S. government has few elected officials
compared to state and local governments
 U.S. has more frequent and varied
elections than any other country in the
world – but lower voter turnout than many

See page 231
37
The Growth of Electoral
Democracy
38
Explaining Political
Participation
 Political participation can be:
 Conventional or unconventional
 Require little or require much initiative
 Serve to support government or influence
its decisions
 People who participate in one way may
not participate in others
39
Patterns of Political
Participation Over Time
 Generally, Americans’ participation
stable over time
 Socioeconomic status a good indicator
of most types of participation
 Income
More aware
of effect of
 Education (most important)
politics on
lives.
 Occupation
 Age, race, and gender also important
40
 More
educated = more
unconventional participation
 Younger = more unconventional like
demonstrations/boycotts but less
likely to participate in conventional
 Voting rates increase as people grow
older until the age of 65
41
 Blacks
vote in comparable % to
whites when SES taken into account
 Married = more likely to vote than
single
 Education strongest indicator of
participation
42
Figure 7.4
Effects of Education on
Political Participation
Education has a
powerful effect on
political participation in
the United States.
These data from a 2008
sample show that level
of education is directly
related to five different
forms of conventional
political participation.
(Respondents tend to
overstate whether they
voted.)
43
Low Voter Turnout in America

Difficult to explain decline in voter turnout
in America
 26th Amendment (younger voters tend not
to vote)
 Belief that government no longer
responsive to citizens; politicians too
packaged
 Change in attitude about political parties

62% voter turnout in 2008 election,
matching highs in the 1960s.
44
Reasons people don’t vote









Low politically efficacy.
Political parties are not the mobilizing force they used to be
Individuals do not perceive personal benefits from voting
Elections are now less competitive; incumbents get re-elected, so why vote?
Recent younger generations have not acquired the habit of voting in the way that earlier
generations did; thus, as older voting people die off, they are being replaced by younger
nonvoters, which lowers turnout rate
Lack of social connectedness—individuals not so integrated into society through
extended families, neighborhoods, religious organizations and the like as they used to
be
Individuals of lower socio-economic standing vote in low proportions to their numbers
No interest in the election.
History of the franchise in the US. Recognition that voting and registration are easier
than ever today—motor-voter registration; registering with people who are empowered
to register voters; individuals can request an advance mail-in ballot, so they can avoid
the voting lines on election day.
45
Figure 7.5
The Decline of Voter Turnout:
An
Unsolved
Puzzle
Education strongly
predicts the likelihood
of voting in the United
States. The percentage
of adult citizens with a
high school education
or more has grown
steadily since the end
of World War II, but the
overall rate of voter
turnout trended
downward from 1960 to
1996 and is still below
the levels two decades
after the war. Why
turnout decreased as
education increased is
an unsolved puzzle in
American voting
behavior.
46
U.S. Turnout Versus Turnout
in Other Countries
 Differences in voting laws and
administrative machinery affect voter
turnout in the U.S.
 Tuesday Election Day not a public holiday
 Burdensome registration procedures
 Political parties not tied to certain groups
 Most elections not particularly competitive
 Large number of elections and candidates
means difficult for voters to educate selves
47
Participation and Freedom,
Equality, and Order
 Participation and freedom
 Citizens free to participate when and how
they want (or not)
 Citizens free to use personal resources to
pursue any legal means to influence
government decisions
48
Participation and Freedom,
Equality, and Order
 Participation and equality requires that
each citizen’s ability to influence
government be equal to every other
citizen
 Differences in resources should not matter
 Elections serve ideal of equality best
 One person, one vote
 Groups can band together to increase
influence
 Blacks, Hispanics, homosexuals increasing in political power
49
Participation and Freedom,
Equality, and Order
 Relationship between participation and
order complicated
 Some types of participation promote order
(voting, pledge allegiance); others, disorder
 Women’s right to vote = upsetting social order
 Political system more threatened by
unconventional participation
 26th Amendment effort to bring order to
Vietnam War protests
 Was the right to vote to 18 year olds simply attempt to curb disorder
by channeling youth energy?
Participation and Models
of Democracy
 Elections
implement democracy by
allowing citizens to choose among
candidates and issues
 Elections socialize political activity
 Elections institutionalize access to
political power
 Elections bolster the state’s power
and authority
51
Participation and
Majoritarianism

Majoritarian theory views participation
narrowly
 Favors conventional participation,
especially voting
 Bias towards equality in elections
 Some say goes hand in hand with
communitarianism

Because majoritarian theory favors
formalized, collective decisions, little
place for private influence
52