Chapter 6
Voters and Voter Behavior
Section 1: The Right to Vote
• Objectives:
– Summarize the history of voting rights in the
United States
– Identify and explain constitutional restrictions on
the States’ power to set voting qualifications
The History of Voting Rights
• Framers of Constitution
– Left the power to suffrage qualifications to each
state
– Suffrage-right to vote
– Franchise-synonym for the right to vote
• 1789-restricted to white male property
owners: 1/15 males voted
• Today-nearly all citizens who are at least 18
years old
Extending Suffrage: The Five Stages
• 1. religious qualifications
– No state has had a religious test since 1810
• 2. 15th Amendment- race or color
– Still for another century African Americans were barred from
voting
• 3. 19th Amendment-denial of the right to vote because of
sex
– 1920 Women’s suffrage: Wyoming allowed women to vote in
1869
• 4. Voting Rights Act of 1965
– Enforces racial equality at polling places
• 5. 26th Amendment-voting age 18
– 1971
The Power to Set Voting Qualifications
• 5 restrictions
• 1. States allows the same voters to vote in all
elections within the State
• 2. 15th Amendment: Race or color
• 3. 19th Amendment: sex
• 4. 24th Amendment: no tax on the selection of
the President, VP, or Congress
• 5. 26th Amendment: 18 to vote
Section 2:
Voter Qualifications
• Objectives:
– Identify the universal qualifications for voting in
the United States
– Explain the other requirements that States use or
have used as voting qualifications
Universal Requirements
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•
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1. Citizenship
Residence
Age
States have some leeway in shaping the
details of the first two but they have no
discretion with regard to the third one
Citizenship
• Aliens, foreign-born residents who have not
become citizens, are generally denied the right to
vote in this country
– Constitution does not say aliens can’t vote
– Example: Pennsylvania constitution says that one
must have become a citizen at least one month before
an election in order to vote in that State
– Section 13. Right of suffrage. All elections shall be free
and open, and no power, civil or military, shall at any
time interfere to prevent the free exercise of the right
of suffrage.
Residence
• Must be a legal US resident of the State in which
he or she wishes to cast a ballot
– Some states you must live in for a certain period
• Most 30 days
• AZ-29 days, MN-20 days, WI-28 days
• Why Resident requirements:
– 1. to keep a political machine from bringing in enough
outsiders to affect the outcome of an election
– 2. allow new voters at least some time in which to
become familiar with candidates and issues in an
upcoming election
Age
• 26th Amendment-1971
– “The right of citizens of the United States, who are
eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be
denied or abridged by the United States or by any
State on account of age”
– *states can lower age but not go higher than 18
Registration
– Procedure of voter identification intended to
prevent fraudulent voting.
• Requirements:
– 49 states except ND require voters to be
registered in order to cast ballots
• Controversies:
– Some states want to get rid of registration
Literacy, Tax Payment
• Literacy: Today, no State has a suffrage
qualification based on voter literacy
- Used to try and ban Irish Catholics and African
Americans from voting
• Tax Payment: many states required a poll tax
be paid in order to vote
– 24th amendment outlawed it
Can You answer these?
• 1. If you have been employed by another during the last five years,
state the nature of your employment and the name or names of
such employers or employers and his or their addresses.
• 2. Give the names of places, respectively, where you have lived
during the last five years; and the name or names by which you
have been known during the last five years.
• 3. Are you now or have you ever been affiliated with any group or
organization which advocates the overthrow of the United State
Government or the government of any State of the United States by
unlawful means?
• 4. Name some of the duties and obligations of citizenship. Do you
regard those duties and obligations as having priority over the
duties and obligations you owe to any other secular organization
when they are in conflict?
Persons Denied the Vote
• Every state does purposely deny the vote to
certain persons.
– People in mental institutions
– Legally found to be mentally incompetent
– Convicted of a serious crime
• Recently most states are allowing convicts to regain the
right to vote
• Some do not allow anyone dishonorably discharged
from the armed forces to cast a ballot
Section 3:
Suffrage and Civil Rights
• Objectives:
– Describe the tactics often used to deny African
Americans the right to vote despite the command
of the 15th Amendment.
– Understand the significance of the civil rights laws
enacted in 1957, 1960, and 1964
– Analyze the provisions and effects of the Voting
Rights Act of 1965
15th Amendment
• The right to vote can not be denied to any
citizen of the US because of “race, color, or
previous condition of servitude.”
– Intended to ensure that African American men,
nearly all of them former slaves and nearly all of
them living in the South, could vote.
History
• African Americans kept from polls
– White Supremacists
• Violence
• Subtle threats
• Social pressures
– Firing African Americans who registered to vote
– Deny family credit at a store
• Literacy tests
• Registration laws
• Gerrymandering-drawing electoral district lines in order to
limit the voting strength of a particular group
• White primary
– Only whites could vote for whites
Court Rulings
• Supreme court outlawed
– the white primary
– Gerrymandering
• Supreme court could only act if those being
discriminated against filed a suit.
Early Civil Rights Legislation
• Congress was moved to act largely on the civil
rights movement by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
• 1950s began to enact civil rights laws to go
with the 15th amendment
Acts of 1957-1960
• Civil Rights Act of 1957; created the US
Commission on Civil Rights
– Inquire into claims of voter discrimination
– Attorney General the power to seek federal court
orders to prevent interference with any person’s right
to vote in any federal election
• The Civil Rights Act of 1960; added an additional
safeguard
– Appointment of federal voting referees
• Serve anywhere a federal court found discrimination\
• Help qualified persons to register and vote
The Civil Rights Act of 1964
• Outlaws discrimination in several areas
– Job related matters
• Forbids the use of any voter registration or
literacy requirement in an unfair or
discriminatory manner
• Emphasized the use of federal court orders called
injunctions
– Court order that either compels or restrains the
performance of some act by a private individual or
public official
Selma
• Dr. King mounted a voter registration drive in
that city in early 1965
– Focus national attention on African American
voting rights
– Insults and violence by white civilians, city and
county police, and State troopers
– 3 civil rights workers were murdered and many
beaten as they marched to the Capitol
http://www.history.com/topics/blackhistory/selma-montgomery-march
Voting Rights Act of 1965
• Made the 15th Amendment
– Applied to all elections held anywhere in the
country, State, local and federal
– Directed the AG to challenge the remaining State
poll-tax laws
– Suspended the use of any literacy test or similar
device in any state or county where less than half
of the voters were registered or had voted in the
64 elections
Preclearance
• Voting Rights Act of 1965 imposed another
restriction
– No new election laws, and no changes in existing
election laws, could go into effect in any of those
States unless first approved or given preclearance
by the department of Justice. Only those new or
revised laws that do not dilute the voting rights of
minority groups can survive the preclearance
process and take effect
• Laws most likely to run afoul of the
preclearance requirement are those that make
these kinds of changes
– The location of polling places
– The boundaries of election districts
– The deadlines in the election process
– A shift from ward or district election to at-large
elections
– The qualifications candidates must meet in order
to run for office
Amendments to the Act
• 1970-extended the law for another 5 years
– No State could use literacy as the basis for any
voting requirement
• 1975-extended for 7 years
– 5 year ban on literacy made permeant
• 1982-extended for 25 years
• 1992– Minority provisions extended to communities with
a minority language population of 10,000 or more
Section 4:
Voter Behavior
• Objectives:
– Examine the problem of nonvoting in this country
– Identify those people who typically do not vote
– Examine the behavior of those who vote and
those who do not vote
– Understand the sociological and psychological
factors that affect voting and voter behavior
Nonvoting
• The word idiot came to our language from the
Greek
– Citizens who did not vote or otherwise take part in
public life
• Election day 2012
– 221 million persons of voting age
– 130 million voted-58%
Why People Do Not Vote
• “Cannot-Voters”
• 2012 elections
– 110 million who did not vote, 20 million are
resident aliens
– 2 to 3 million voters were sick, ill or physically
disabled
– 1 to 2 million were traveling suddenly and
couldn’t vote
– 2 million adults in jail
– 100,000- religious beliefs
• Actual Nonvoters
– 85 million did not vote
• To busy to vote
• Political efficacy-lack any feeling of influence or
effectiveness in politics
• Comparing Voters and Nonvoters
• Nonvoters
– Likely to be under 35, unmarried and unskilled
– More live in the south and rural areas
– Men are less likely to vote than women
• Voters
– High sense of political efficacy
– Greater the competition between candidates
Voters and Voting Behavior
• Studying Voting Behavior
– Three sources
• The results of particular elections
• The field of survey research
– Polling population
• Studies of political socialization
– Process by which people gain their political attitudes and
opinions
Sociological Factors
– College graduates-vote Republican and persons over
50
– African Americans-vote Democrats and labor unions
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Income and Occupation
Education
Gender, Age
Religion, Ethnic Background
Geography
Family and other groups
Psychological Factors
• Voters perceptions of politics: how they see and
react to the parties, the candidates, and the
issues in an election
• Party Identification
– Straight ticket voting-one party
– Split ticket voting-more than one party
– Independent- no party
• Candidates and Issues
– Party identification
• Candidate and issues in an election