Whose Votes Count?

Whose Votes Count?
Author: Abigail M. Thernstrom
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 348
Release: 1987
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780674951952

"A Twentieth Century Fund study."Includes indexes. Bibliography: p. [257]-302.

Broken Ballots

Broken Ballots
Author: Douglas Jones
Publisher: Center for the Study of Language and Information Publica Tion
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012
Genre: Elections
ISBN: 9781575866369

For many of us, the presidential election of 2000 was a wake-up call. The controversy following the vote count led to demands for election reform. But the new voting systems that were subsequently introduced to the market have serious security flaws, and many are confusing and difficult to use. Moreover, legislation has not kept up with the constantly evolving voting technology, leaving little to no legal recourse when votes are improperly counted. How did we come to acquire the complex technology we now depend on to count votes? Douglas Jones and Barbara Simons probe this question, along with public policy and regulatory issues raised by our voting technologies. Broken Ballots is a thorough and incisive analysis of the current voting climate that approaches American elections from technological, legal, and historical perspectives. The authors examine the ways in which Americans vote today, gauging how inaccurate, unreliable, and insecure our voting systems are. An important book for election administrators, political scientists, and students of government and technology policy, Broken Ballots is also a vital tool for any voting American.

Black Votes Count

Black Votes Count
Author: Frank R. Parker
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2011-03-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0807869694

Most Americans see the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as the culmination of the civil rights movement. When the law was enacted, black voter registration in Mississippi soared. Few black candidates won office, however. In this book, Frank Parker describes black Mississippians' battle for meaningful voting rights, bringing the story up to 1986, when Mike Espy was elected as Mississippi's first black member of Congress in this century. To nullify the impact of the black vote, white Mississippi devised a political "massive resistance" strategy, adopting such disenfranchising devices as at-large elections, racial gerrymandering, making elective offices appointive, and revising the qualifications for candidates for public office. As legal challenges to these mechanisms mounted, Mississippi once again became the testing ground for deciding whether the promises of the Fifteenth Amendment would be fulfilled, and Parker describes the court battles that ensued until black voters obtained relief.

Making Votes Count

Making Votes Count
Author: Gary W. Cox
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 362
Release: 1997-03-28
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780521585279

Popular elections are at the heart of representative democracy. Thus, understanding the laws and practices that govern such elections is essential to understanding modern democracy. In this book, Cox views electoral laws as posing a variety of coordination problems that political forces must solve. Coordination problems - and with them the necessity of negotiating withdrawals, strategic voting, and other species of strategic coordination - arise in all electoral systems. This book employs a unified game-theoretic model to study strategic coordination worldwide and that relies primarily on constituency-level rather than national aggregate data in testing theoretical propositions about the effects of electoral laws. This book also considers not just what happens when political forces succeed in solving the coordination problems inherent in the electoral system they face but also what happens when they fail.

Votes That Count and Voters Who Don’t

Votes That Count and Voters Who Don’t
Author: Sharon E. Jarvis
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2019-06-27
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0271082887

For decades, journalists have called the winners of U.S. presidential elections—often in error—well before the closing of the polls. In Votes That Count and Voters Who Don’t, Sharon E. Jarvis and Soo-Hye Han investigate what motivates journalists to call elections before the votes have been tallied and, more importantly, what this and similar practices signal to the electorate about the value of voter participation. Jarvis and Han track how journalists have told the story of electoral participation during the last eighteen presidential elections, revealing how the portrayal of voters in the popular press has evolved over the last half century from that of mobilized partisan actors vital to electoral outcomes to that of pawns of political elites and captives of a flawed electoral system. The authors engage with experiments and focus groups to reveal the effects that these portrayals have on voters and share their findings in interviews with prominent journalists. Votes That Count and Voters Who Don’t not only explores the failings of the media but also shows how the story of electoral participation might be told in ways that support both democratic and journalistic values. At a time when professional strategists are pressuring journalists to provide favorable coverage for their causes and candidates, this book invites academics, organizations, the press, and citizens alike to advocate for the voter’s place in the news.

Who's Counting?

Who's Counting?
Author: John Fund
Publisher: Encounter Books
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2012-08-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1594036195

The 2012 election will be one of the hardest-fought in U.S. history. It is also likely to be one of the closest, a fact that brings concerns about voter fraud and bureaucratic incompetence in the conduct of elections front and center. If we don't take notice, we could see another debacle like the Bush-Gore Florida recount of 2000 in which courts and lawyers intervened in what should have involved only voters. Who's Counting? will focus attention on many problems of our election system, ranging from voter fraud to a slipshod system of vote counting that noted political scientist Walter Dean Burnham calls “the most careless of the developed world.” In an effort to clean up our election laws, reduce fraud and increase public confidence in the integrity of the voting system, many states ranging from Georgia to Wisconsin have passed laws requiring a photo ID be shown at the polls and curbing the rampant use of absentee ballots, a tool of choice by fraudsters. The response from Obama allies has been to belittle the need for such laws and attack them as akin to the second coming of a racist tide in American life. In the summer of 2011, both Bill Clinton and DNC chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz preposterously claimed that such laws suppressed minority voters and represented a return to the era of Jim Crow. But voter fraud is a well-documented reality in American elections. Just this year, a sheriff and county clerk in West Virginia pleaded guilty to stuffing ballot boxes with fraudulent absentee ballots that changed the outcome of an election. In 2005, a state senate election in Tennessee was overturned because of voter fraud. The margin of victory? 13 votes. In 2008, the Minnesota senate race that provided the 60th vote needed to pass Obamacare was decided by a little over 300 votes. Almost 200 felons have already been convicted of voting illegally in that election and dozens of other prosecutions are still pending. Public confidence in the integrity of elections is at an all-time low. In the Cooperative Congressional Election Study of 2008, 62% of American voters thought that voter fraud was very common or somewhat common. Fear that elections are being stolen erodes the legitimacy of our government. That's why the vast majority of Americans support laws like Kansas's Secure and Fair Elections Act. A 2010 Rasmussen poll showed that 82% of Americans support photo ID laws. While Americans frequently demand observers and best practices in the elections of other countries, we are often blind to the need to scrutinize our own elections. We may pay the consequences in 2012 if a close election leads us into pitched partisan battles and court fights that will dwarf the Bush-Gore recount wars.

Integrity Counts

Integrity Counts
Author: Brad Raffensperger
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 121
Release: 2021-11-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1637630336

Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger recounts his defense of the results of the 2020 presidential election in his state and the surrounding events, as well as discussion of events following the 2018 race for governor of Georgia.

Count My Vote

Count My Vote
Author: Steven Rosenfeld
Publisher: Alternet Books
Total Pages: 140
Release: 2008
Genre: Political Science
ISBN:

Count My Vote is a hands-on voter's guide to navigating every possible voting situation one might encounter in the upcoming elections. The extended primary and caucus season in early 2008 has shown that in state after state, numerous problems face voters -- problems that may be the beginning of a larger issue poised to surface on November 4, 2008. Count My Vote prepares the voting public to cast their ballots with confidence. Voters will learn how to deal with new voting technology and will get tips on avoiding problems at the polls in all 50 states. The guide analyzes reports by activists, public interest lawyers, and voter demographics across America, and provides suggestions on what voters should be aware of before heading to the polls. Count My Vote also offers a state-by-state description of voting procedures and deadlines and lists important resources.

Count Them One by One

Count Them One by One
Author: Gordon A. Martin
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2011-01-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1604737905

Forrest County, Mississippi, became a focal point of the civil rights movement when, in 1961, the United States Justice Department filed a lawsuit against its voting registrar Theron Lynd. While thirty percent of the county's residents were black, only twelve black persons were on its voting rolls. United States v. Lynd was the first trial that resulted in the conviction of a southern registrar for contempt of court. The case served as a model for other challenges to voter discrimination in the South, and was an important influence in shaping the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Count Them One by One is a comprehensive account of the groundbreaking case written by one of the Justice Department's trial attorneys. Gordon A. Martin, Jr., then a newly-minted lawyer, traveled to Hattiesburg from Washington to help shape the federal case against Lynd. He met with and prepared the government's sixteen black witnesses who had been refused registration, found white witnesses, and was one of the lawyers during the trial. Decades later, Martin returned to Mississippi and interviewed the still-living witnesses, their children, and friends. Martin intertwines these current reflections with commentary about the case itself. The result is an impassioned, cogent fusion of reportage, oral history, and memoir about a trial that fundamentally reshaped liberty and the South.

Every Vote Counts

Every Vote Counts
Author: Richard Soudriette
Publisher:
Total Pages: 184
Release: 2007
Genre: Political Science
ISBN:

Every Vote Counts starts from the premise that free and fair elections are the foundation upon which democracy is built. Given this fact, the study explores the role of foreign electoral assistance in helping to spread democracy around the globe during the past two decades. Among other issues, its authors examine: (1) the challenges of organizing elections in two of the most demanding environments of recent years (Iraq and Afghanistan); (2) the effect of African popular opinion about the quality of elections on citizens' trust in their political institutions; (3) how Ukrainians have chosen legal and electoral means to resolve disputes rather than open conflict; (4) Indonesians' growing understanding of democracy, which has resulted in increased participation; and (5) electoral assistance as a critical component of American public diplomacy and efforts to reach out to the rest of the world. Each chapter of Every Vote Counts documents the experiences of democracy professionals, who often use case studies to describe what worked-and what didn't-on the ground, instead of relying on mere conjectures. Above all, these experts underscore the importance of providing democratic assistance long enough for local officials to acquire the expertise and confidence they need to manage elections on their own. Book jacket.