VOTERS AND VOTER
BEHAVIOR
Unit 3,
Notes 2
VOTING RIGHTS
Framers left power to set suf frage
qualifications to each state
 Suffrage = right to vote
 When constitution ratified in 1789
 right to vote only allowed white, male,
property owner
 Most could not vote
 Today electorate – those allowed to
vote, much larger, almost anyone
18 or older
 Because of the many changes over
200 years of who is allowed to vote
(laws)
 Over years this power has gradually
been assumed by federal government
5 STAGES OF EXTENDING SUFFRAGE
 1) Early 1800s ended any religious test to
vote
 Had been in place during colonial days
 After that, states began eliminating qualifications
property ownership, and tax payment
 2) 15 th Amendment allowed African
American to vote
 Said no citizen can be denied right to vote
because of race or color
 Still prevented from voting by individual state
laws created to get around this
 3) 19 th Amendment – can not be prevented
from voting because of sex
5 STAGES OF EXTENDING SUFFRAGE,
CONT.
 4) Voting Rights Act of 1965 –
African Americans allowed to
vote
 23 rd Amendment – gave D.C.
votes in Presidential electorate
 24 th Amendment – eliminated
poll tax
 5) 26 th Amendment – no state
can set minimum voting age at
more than 18.
 States still allowed power to
set voter qualifications
ROLE OF THE STATES
States determine who can vote
o All states say you must meet qualifications based on 3 factors
1)
2)
3)
Citizenship
Residence
Age
CITIZENSHIP
Aliens – foreign born people who live in the US but have not
become citizens
 Are generally denied the right to vote
 But nothing in Constitution says they can not or states can not allow
them to vote
 Some states will allow them to vote if they have applied for
citizenship
RESIDENCE
Must be a legal resident of state in
which you want to vote
 Do this for 2 reasons
1) keep political par ties from
bribing outsider s to come in
and vote on their elections
2) all new voter s (residents of
state) time to get to know
issues of the state and the
candidates
o Most say you have to live in state for 30
days
o Most do prohibit transients – person
living in state for a short time from
gaining legal residence
o College student – only temporarily there
so can’t vote
o But many states will allow your campus
community to count for residency so you
can vote
AGE
26 th Amendment - must be 18 or older
 Minimum age can not be more than 18, can set less than 18
if states want to
 Made in 1971 during Vietnam – ratified more quickly than any other
amendment
 “old enough to fight, old enough to vote”
 But you people don’t show up to vote
OTHER QUALIFICATIONS
 Registration
Must register to vote
Procedure of voter identification to prevent fraudulent voting
Gives election officials list of qualified voters
Must register name, age, place of birth, present address, length of
residence
 Local election officials ordered to purge lists of registered voters




 remove names of those no longer eligible
 Some think that registering should be done away with because it
hinders people from voting, especially poor, uneducated
 Most states have eased registration process
OTHER QUALIFICATIONS, CONT.
Congressed passed law requiring it
 Motor Voter Law – states must…
1) allow eligible citizens to register when applying for or
renewing license
2) provide for voter registration by mail
3) make registration forms available at state
employment, welfare, and other social service agencies
4) requires questionnaires be mailed to registered
voters so poll can be purged for deaths or changes of
address
5) can not be purged for failure to vote
LITERACY
No state has qualification based on literacy
– ability to read or write
 Was used to make sure voter could cast
informed ballots
 Used unfairly to keep African Americans
and Native Americans from voting
 Many white people asked to “understand”
short passages from constitution
 African Americans given long, highly complex
passages
 This sometimes hindered whites from voting
 Enacted grandfather clause
 A man or his male descendants who had voted
before 15 th Amendment could legally vote
without passing literacy test
 Voting Rights Acts ended this
15 TH AMENDMENT
Right to vote cannot be denied due to race,
color, or previous condition of ser vitude
 Intended to ensure that African American
men could vote
 But all the amendment did was make this
statement
 It did not provide a means to enforce and
implement
 To make it ef fective congress would have
to act
 would not happen for 90 years
 During that time African Americans were
kept from polls in most of south
 Used violence, threats, would fire them if they
registered to vote
 “Legal devices” were used – literacy tests
 Poll taxes
GERRYMANDERING
Gerrymandering – drawing electoral district line to limit voting
strength of particular party
 “white primaries” – always elected a democrat
 Also states defined political parties as “private associations”
 Can choose to exclude members, only party members could vote in
primary
 Supreme Court outlawed gerrymandering in Alabama
 Gomillion v. Lightfoot
 AL legislature had redrawn electoral districts around Tuskegee to not
include blacks in city limits
 Court said this violated 15 th Amendment because it irregularly shaped
district clearly created to deprive blacks of political power
CIVIL RIGHTS AND VOTING RIGHTS
Civil Rights Act of 1957 – set up US Civil Rights Commission
 Job to inquire into claims of voter discrimination
Civil Rights Act of 1964
 Broader and more ef fective
 Outlaws discrimination in several areas, especially job -related
 Forbids use of any voter registration or literacy requirement in unfair
discriminatory manner
 Relied on judicial action to overcome problems and used federal
courts to order change
 Injunctions – court order that either compels (forces) or restrains
(limits) the performance of some act by private individual or public
official
 A violation of an injunction may = prison
 Many protests and sit-ins all around South
VOTING RIGHTS ACT OF 1965
Finally made 15 th Amendment actually ef fective
 Applied to all elections, federal, state, local
 Only for 5 years but congress had extended it each time
 No more use of literacy test or similar device
 Gave federal officers right to oversee voting in some areas
VOTER PARTICIPATION
Throughout history less and less people have been
exercising their right to vote
 Even lower rates of turnout in off year elections
 in congressional elections held in even-numbered years
between presidential elections
Nonvoter problems more than 10 million persons who
voted in last presidential election could also have voted
for a congressional candidate but they did not choose to
 They are called “nonvoting voters”
 They are much more common in state and local
elections
 As a general rule, the farther down the ballot an office
is, the fewer the number of votes that will be cast
 This is sometimes referred to as “ballot fatigue”
 This suggests that many voters exhaust their patience
and/or knowledge as they work their way down the
ballot
WHY PEOPLE DO NOT VOTE
Cannot-voters
 Several million persons who are regularly
identified as nonvoters can be more
accurately described as “cannot voters”
 They don’t vote, but they actually cannot do so
 Some of these people are resident aliens
 They are barred from the polls in every
state
 Others may be sick or disabled
 Other reasons include mental condition,
prison or religious beliefs
ACTUAL NONVOTERS
Millions of actual nonvoters
 Those who could have voted in presidential election but did not
 Number of reasons for this
 Many who could vote do not because they are convinced that it
makes little real difference who wins
 The large group contains two different groups of non -voters
 It includes many who generally approve of the way the public
business is being managed
 They believe no matter who wins things will continue to go well
 Many other feel alienated
 Many who deliberately refuse to vote because they don’t trust political
institutions
 Others believe their vote has no real impact on what government
does or the outcome of the election
FACTORS AFFECTING TURNOUT
Other factors af fect whether voters
show up at poll
 Cumbersome election procedures
 inconvenient registration requirements
 long ballots, long lines at polling place
 Of all reasons the major cause for
nonvoting is lack of interest
 Most often they do not know even the
simplest facts about the candidates
and issues involved
COMPARING VOTERS AND NON-VOTERS
Many dif ferences between them
 People most likely to vote display characteristics as higher levels of
income, education and occupational status
 Tend to be long-time residents who are active in or comfortable with
their surroundings
 Likely to have strong sense of party identification and believe that
voting is an important act
 Nonvoters likely to be younger than 35, unmarried, unskilled
 More in the South and rural areas
 Today women more likely to vote than men
SOCIOLOGICAL FACTORS
Parts of voters social and economic life that af fect voting
 Income, occupation
 Voters in lower income brackets more like to be democrats
 Voters in higher income brackets tend to be republicans
 Professional and business people tend to vote republican
 Gender, Age
 Women tend to favor democrats, Men = republican
 Younger voters – more likely democrat
 Religious, Ethic
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

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Protestants – republican
Catholic, Jewish – democrat
African American – democrat
Latino - democrat