American Cit.

Chapter 6

Voters and Voter Behavior

Section 1

• The right to vote

The History of Voting Rights

• Suffrage• The right to vote (AKA Franchise)

• Expansion of the Electorate• The U.S. electorate includes some 210 million

citizens

• potential voting population

• originally a state power, however progressively a federal power

The History of Voting Rights (Con’t)

• extending suffrage: Five Stages• first stage: Early 1800’s

• religious, ownership, tax payments banned

• second stage: 1870• 15th amendment all races allowed to vote

• Third stage: 1920• 19th amendment gave women suffrage

• Fourth stage: 1960’s• voting Rights Act of 1965 removed any remaining barriers

to African American suffrage

• Fifth stage• lower voting age to 18 yrs. Old

The Power to set voting Qualifications

• Still state power, however it can not be unconstitutional

Section 2

• Voter qualification

Universal Requirements

• Citizenship• Most require you to be an American citizen

• Residence• Must be a permanent resident of the state

you vote in• Most states do not set a requirement time

period today• Transients generally can not vote in new

state• person living in the state for only a short time

• Age• Until 26th amendment, states varied with

age from 21 to 18

Other Qualifications

• Registration• A procedure of voter identification

intended to prevent transient voting• Purging

• removing individuals who are not longer eligible to vote

• Poll Books• the lists of all registered voters in each

precincts

• Fight over how to stream-line it and avoid fraud

Other Qualifications (Con’t)• Literacy

• A person’s ability to read or write

• No longer required, however it was used to discourage African-American slaves

• forced creation of “Grandfather Clause”

• Tax payment• demanded payment of a special tax called a Poll Tax

• However found unconstitutional

• Persons denied the vote• declared mentally incompetent

• felons

Section 3

• Suffrage and Civil Rights

Fifteenth Amendment

• Gave nearly all slaves the right to vote• However the right was still denied for nearly 90

years

• Violence used to persuade

• Literacy test

• Gerrymandering

• drawing of electoral district lines

• Democrats continually denied blacks into primary’s in the South

Early Civil Rights Legislation

• Civil Rights Act of 1957• Inquired into claims of voter discrimination

• Civil Rights Act of 1960• Allowed federal voting referees

The Civil rights Act of 1964

• Forbid voter registration or literacy in an unfair or discriminatory manner

• Use judicial branch to determine discrimination

• Used injunctions

• court order that forces or restrains certain actions by public or private officials

The Voting Rights Act of 1965

• Applied to all elections and cemented 15th amendment

• Preclearance

• Approval by the Department of Justice

• Amendments to the Act

• Requirement to language

• 10,000 or more, minority

African Americans at the Polls

Chapter 6, Section 32 41

Section 4

• Voter Behavior

Nonvoters

• The word idiot is Greek and it means citizens who do not vote

The Size of the Problem

• Off-year elections• Congressional elections held in the even-

numbered years between presidential elections

• Many choose not to vote due to “voting fatigue”

• Presidential elections most voter population and participation

Why People do not vote• Cannot voters

• Resident aliens are denied access to vote

• Disabled

• Actual voters• Convinced there is no purpose

• Political efficacy

• lack any sense of their own influence or effectiveness in politics

• they feel popular sovereignty is no longer alive

Why People do not vote (Con’t)

• Factors affecting voters• Mostly lack of interest

• Comparing voters and nonvoters• Voters tend to have higher income, education,

and occupational status

• Unvoters are generally younger than 35, unmarried and unskilled

• However multiple factors affect it.

Voters and voting Behavior• Studying voting behavior

• Political socialization

• the process by which people gain their political attitudes and opinions

• Gender, Age

• gender gap

• measurable difference between the partisan choices of men and women

• Men more likely GOP and women more likely Democrat

• Younger people more likely vote Democrat and older people more likely vote GOP

Voters and voting Behavior (Con’t)• Religious, Ethnic Background

• Protestants more likely vote GOP• Catholics and Jews tend to vote Democrat• FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Civil Rights Acts of the

1960’s moved majority of African-American votes to Democrats

• Latino’s are more unpredictable

• Geography• GOP has drawn good support from the South, and

Democrats to the North• Democrats tend to get the bigger cities, while GOP

draws the rural areas of the country

• Family and Other Groups• 9/10 married couples vote the same way

Psychological Factors• Voters perceptions of politics

• Party Identification• Loyalty to Political Party• Straight Ticket Voting

• The practice of voting for candidates of only one party in an election

• Weakened over the years• as evident by more split-ticket voting

• also the rise of people who consider themselves independent

• Candidates and Issues• Exit polls greatly reveal the role of the Candidates

character and their stance on issues, in determining their electorate

Sociological Factors

Income andOccupation

Education Gender and Age

Religious andEthnic Background

Geography Family and OtherGroups

Voter preferences can’t be predicted by just

one sociological factor. Voter opinion is a

combination of all of these factors and more.

Chapter 6, Section 42 31