Is This Any Way to Run a Democratic Election?

Stephen J. Wayne

• Publisher: CQ Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781452205656
• eBook ISBN: 9781483321677
• Edition: 5
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Campaigns & Elections
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The 2012 election is over, but the debate over the fairness and accuracy of our electoral system continues. The courts are dealing with the alleged discriminatory impact of voter ID requirements on minority voters; privacy and vote manipulation are concerns as political campaigns utilize new technology to target voters; the news media are contending with harsh public criticism of their elections coverage; the campaign finance floodgates were opened with vast resources spent on negative advertising; and the Electoral College continues to undermine a national, democratic electoral system—Is this any way to run a democratic election?

This fully updated fifth edition answers that important question by looking at both recent events and recent scholarship focused on the democratic electoral process, including new data and timely illustrations from the 2012 elections.

Chapter

1

Democratic Elections

What’s the Problem?

Did you know that …

• a majority of the voting-age population does not vote in most elections in the United States?

• Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, when first elected president, each received the votes of only about one quarter of those eligible to vote; in his sizable electoral victory, Barack Obama received the votes of 33 percent of those eligible and 30 percent of voting-age adults in 2008 and 29.6 percent and 27 percent, respectively, in 2012?

• most members of Congress have no effective opposition in running for renomination, and some have no opponents in the general election?

• since 1964, more than 90 percent of members of the House of Representatives and 80 percent of the Senate have been reelected?

• no third-party presidential candidate has received any electoral votes since 1972?

• there were more ballots discarded or undercounted in New York City and Chicago in the 2000 election than there were disputed ballots in the controversial Florida presidential vote that year?

• about $5 billion was spent on federal elections in the 2007–2008 election cycle and more than $6 billion in 2011–2012?

• information about how elections are conducted in the United States is so fragmentary that the government does not know how many people are turned away at the polls, how long people stand in lines waiting to vote, how many ballots are voided or simply not counted, and how many voting machines malfunction?

• it took more than seven months in 2008 for officials and the courts to determine the winner of the election in Minnesota for a seat in the U.S. Senate?

• the average length of time that presidential candidates appeared on the evening news shows of the major broadcast networks in the last three elections was about seven seconds?

• candidate advertising in recent federal elections has been much more negative than postive?

• more than $200 million was spent on advertising during the 2008 Democratic and Republican nomination processes, with the Democrats spending more than twice as much. In 2012, the Romney campaign was the big Republican spender, spending more than his opponents combined?

• only about one-third of the people can name the member of Congress who represents them during nonelectoral periods?

Is this any way to run a democratic election?

These facts suggest that something is terribly wrong with our electoral process. They raise serious questions about how democratic the American political system really is. They also point to the major problems within that system: low voter turnout; fraudulent, error-prone, and discriminatory voting practices; uneven and inadequate administration of elections by state and local officials; high costs and unequal resources for candidates running for office; short, compartmentalized, and negative media coverage; and contradictory, often inconclusive results. Let’s take a look at some examples of these problems.

CONTEMPORARY ELECTION ISSUES

Low Voter Turnout

People fight for the right to vote when they don’t have it. Americans certainly did. In 1776, British colonists, protesting taxation without representation in Parliament, declared their independence with a rhetorical flourish that underscored the people’s right to alter or abolish a government that wasn’t fulfilling the purpose for which it was intended.

Now, more than two centuries later, in a country that prides itself on its long and successful political tradition and on its fundamental democratic values, a majority of the electorate does not vote on a regular basis. Why do so few people vote? Does it have to do with how candidates run for office, how and when elections are conducted, or whether the public perceives that elections really matter—whether they make a difference in people’s lives or in the country’s future?

Congress considers low turnout to be a problem, a sign that the democracy is not as vigorous as it could or should be. During the last several decades, it has enacted legislation to encourage more people to vote. At the end of the 1970s, an amendment to the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) was passed to permit political parties to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money on building their grassroots base and getting out the vote, yet turnout continued to decline.

During the 1980s, amendments were added to the act to broaden its applicability and facilitate minority participation in the electoral process, yet the turnout of most population groups continued to decline.

In 1993 a “motor voter” bill, designed to make it easier for people in all fifty states to register to vote, was enacted, yet the percentage of the adult population reporting that it registered decreased in the years following the passage of the law.

In 2002, Congress enacted the Help America Vote Act, which provides money to states to computerize their voter registration lists, buy more accurate voting machines, and allows for provisional voting for people who claim that they registered but whose names do not appear on the lists of eligible voters in the precinct in which they live and vote. Millions of new voters have been registered since the enactment of the 2002 legislation. In 2002, 74.7 percent of the voting-age population was registered to vote; by 2010, that figure had climbed to 78.7 percent, 186.9 million voters.¹ As the percentages indicate, the increase in new voters has exceeded the growth of the voting-age population.

Turnout has been increasing among the voting-age population as well, although not as rapidly as voter registration, according to turnout expert Michael McDonald, a political science professor at George Mason University. Table 1 notes the figures since the beginning of the twenty-first century.

The bad news is that still more than four out of ten people eligible to vote do not do so in presidential elections and six out of ten in the midterm elections.²

The issue of nonvoting raises serious questions about the vibrancy of America’s civic culture and the health of its democratic political institutions. With so many people not voting, do elections reflect the judgment of all the people or of a small and unrepresentative proportion of them? Similarly, to whom are elected officials more responsive—the entire population or the people who elected them? Do elections with low participation rates still provide an agenda for government and legitimacy for its actions? If they do not, then what does?

TABLE 1.1 Turnout in Federal Elections in the Twenty-First Century (Based on the Voting-Age Population)

Year	Percent of Voting-Age Population (VAP)
2000	50.0
2002	33.3
2004	55.4
2006	37.1
2008	56.9
2010	37.8
2012	53.6

Source: Michael McDonald, “United States Elections Project: Voter Turnout.” http://elections.gmu.edu/Turnout_2012G.htm

Fraudulent, Error-Prone, and Discriminatory Voting Practices

The Florida voting controversy in the 2000 election in which the official results were disputed highlighted many of the voting problems that have plagued the U.S. electoral system since its creation. The Constitution charges the states with the conduct of federal elections. The states set most of the rules for registration, ballot access, and absentee voting; they determine the period during which voting occurs, the procedures for exercising a vote, and the manner in which votes are to be tabulated and reported. Local electoral districts within the states often designate the polling places, run the election, and provide the ballots or machines for voting. As a consequence of the decentralization of election administration, there is considerable variation in voting procedures among the states and even within them.

Political parties indirectly affect the vote by the influence they exert on elected and appointed state officials. In fact, for most of the nation’s first one hundred years, the major parties actually ran the elections. They rallied their supporters, got them to the polls, and made sure they voted “correctly” by designing and distributing color-coded ballots on which only the names of their candidates appeared. They also had poll watchers observing how people voted.

Allegations of fraudulent practices, including voting by noncitizens and the deceased, casting multiple ballots in the same election, and under- and over-counting of the votes were rampant. The adoption of the secret ballot and the administration of elections by state officials were responses to these unfair, underhanded, and undemocratic election practices. The development of machines to tabulate the vote was another. But problems persisted because most state legislatures still enacted election laws and drafted legislative districts to benefit those in power.

Registration and residence requirements have been used to limit the size of the electorate. Geographic representation in one of the two legislative bodies (prior to the 1960s) gave rural areas a disproportionate advantage. In some states, the laws were administered in a discriminatory and haphazard fashion, making it more difficult for some people, particularly minorities, to vote.

Not until the 1960s did the Supreme Court and Congress address some of these issues.³ The Court ruled that population and population alone had to be the criterion by which representation was determined: one person–one vote. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was intended to end discriminatory practices and effectively extend suffrage to all eligible citizens. Registration requirements were eased, voting hours were extended, absentee voting opportunities were expanded, and for a time, money for party-building activities was exempted from federal contribution limits.

These laws and judicial decisions went a long way toward extending the franchise, encouraging turnout, and ending some of the practices which undercut the democratic character of U.S. elections. But they did not eliminate all of those practices. Nor did they improve the actual conduct of elections. After the 2000 election controversy in Florida, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights issued a report concluding that African Americans in that state were much more likely than white voters to be turned away from the polls.⁴ Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the California Institute of Technology (CalTech) deduced that between four million and six million votes for president in the 2000 election were not counted, some because of registration foul-ups, some because of voter confusion and error, and some because of faulty equipment.⁵ In close elections, these undercounted votes could have made a difference and even changed the final outcome.

Problems remain today. Registration foul-ups, inadequate parking, long lines to vote, insufficient numbers of poll workers, machine and computer malfunctions, and poor ballot designs continue to hamper the act of voting. Can an election be considered democratic if citizens have to overcome these hurdles in order to vote? Can the results be regarded as legitimate if the votes of a sizable proportion of a state’s population, enough to have...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Half title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Figures, Tables, and Boxes
• Preface
• 1. Democratic Elections: What’s the Problem?
• 2. Popular Base of American Electoral Politics
• 3. How Representative Are American Elections?
• 4. Has Money Corrupted Our Electoral Process?
• 5. News Media: Watchdog or Pit Bull?
• 6. Are American Parties Still Representative?
• 7. The Nomination Process: Whose Is It Anyway?
• 8. Campaign Communications: How Much Do They Matter?
• 9. Elections and Government: A Tenuous Connection
• Index