Voting and Elections

Making up 14.2 percent of the American population, Hispanics are now the largest minority group in the United States. Clearly, securing the Hispanic vote is more important to political parties than ever before. Yet, despite the current size of the Hispanic population, is there a clear Hispanic politics? Who are Hispanic voters? What are their political preferences and attitudes, and why? The first comprehensive study of Hispanic voters in the United States, New Faces, New Voices paints a complex portrait of this diverse and growing population.

Americans take for granted that ours is the very model of a democracy. At the core of this belief is the assumption that the right to vote is firmly established. But in fact, the United States is the only major democratic nation in which the less well-off, the young, and minorities are substantially underrepresented in the electorate. Analyzing the results of voter registration reform, and drawing compelling historical parallels, Piven and Cloward reveal why neither of the major parties has tried to appeal to the interests of the newly registered-and thus why Americans still don't vote.

A New York Times Notable Book of 2015. A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2015. Countless books have been written about the civil rights movement, but far less attention has been paid to what happened after the dramatic passage of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) in 1965 and the turbulent forces it unleashed. Give Us the Ballot tells this story for the first time. In this groundbreaking narrative history, Ari Berman charts both the transformation of American democracy under the VRA and the counterrevolution that has sought to limit voting rights, from 1965 to the present day.

The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) was enacted on May 20, 1993, to promote voter registration.

After a six-month extensive examination of how elections are conducted throughout the
United States, we, the members of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration,
conclude that problems that hinder the efficient administration of elections are
both identifiable and solvable. This Report sets forth many recommendations and best
practices derived from our examination.

Passed in 1965 during the height of the Civil Rights movement, the Voting Rights Act (VRA) changed the face of the American electorate, dramatically increasing minority voting, especially in the South. While portions of the Act are permanent, certain provisions were set to expire in 2007. Reauthorization of these provisions passed by a wide margin in the House, and unanimously in the Senate, but the lopsided tally hid a deep and growing conflict. The Most Fundamental Right is an effort to understand the debate over the Act and its role in contemporary American democracy. Is the VRA the cornerstone of civil rights law that prevents unfair voting practices, or is it an anachronism that no longer serves American democracy?

To many observers, the 1981 election of Henry Cisneros as mayor of San Antonio, Texas, represented the culminating victory in the Chicano community's decades-long struggle for inclusion in the city's political life. Yet, nearly twenty years later, inclusion is still largely an illusion for many working-class and poor Chicanas and Chicanos, since business interests continue to set the city's political and economic priorities. In this book, Rodolfo Rosales offers the first in-depth history of the Chicano community's struggle for inclusion in the political life of San Antonio during the years 1951 to 1991, drawn from interviews with key participants as well as archival research.

This work addresses questions concerning the theory of the state through the use of a nonlinear dynamical theoretical model. This model identifies the principal structural reasons for the state's autonomy even though the state is a creation of the dynamical social relations of any society.

Presidents spend millions of dollars on public opinion polling while in office. Critics often point to this polling as evidence that a "permanent campaign" has taken over the White House at the expense of traditional governance. But has presidential polling truly changed the shape of presidential leadership? Diane J. Heith examines the polling practices of six presidential administrations--those of Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton--dissecting the poll apparatus of each period. She contends that while White House polls significantly influence presidential messages and responses to events, they do not impact presidential decisions to the extent that observers often claim. Heith concludes that polling, and thus the campaign environment, exists in tandem with long-established governing strategies.

Here, at last, is the book for anyone who ever wondered how the media extravaganzas we call political campaigns really work. Everything You Think You Know About Politics;and Why You're Wrong explores why the American public, seemingly so eager for "unspun" information about candidates and their positions, invariably ends up feeling manipulated by our political process. Challenging the reader with strategically placed quizzes, well-known commentator on the media and politics Kathleen Hall Jamieson surveys the existing public record on voting patterns, campaign promises, and all manner of electioneering and comes up with an engaging mix of analysis, surprising factoids, and political cartoons. This book separates the facts from the convenient fictions that deter Americans from caring about the processes and outcomes of elections.

The 2016 presidential primaries are on the horizon and this new edition of Elaine Kamarck’sPrimary Politics will be there to help make sense of them. Updated to include the 2012 election, it will once again be the guide to understanding the modern nominating system and some of its arcana, including the "robot rule.” In Primary Politics, political insider Elaine Kamarck explains how the presidential nomination process became the often baffling system we have today. Her focus is the largely untold story of how presidential candidates since the early 1970s have sought to alter the rules in their favor and how their failures and successes have led to even more change. She describes how candidates have sought to manipulate the sequencing of primaries to their advantage and how Iowa and New Hampshire came to dominate the system. She analyzes the rules that are used to translate votes into delegates, paying special attention to the Democrats' twenty-year fight over proportional representation. Drawing on meticulous research, interviews with key figures in both parties, and years of experience, this book explores one of the most important questions in American politics -- how we narrow the list of presidential candidates every four years.

Presidential campaigns and elections provide the drama and substance of America's democratic process. As democracy in action, they punctuate our nation's history in precise intervals, capturing the issues, the ideas, and the mood of the nation every four years. Every/campaign follows a similar format: candidates jockey for selection, nominations are made, candidates and party leaders hit the trail, and voters render their decision on Election Day. Yet despite this familiar process, every campaign is unique, featuring colorful personalities and unexpected events. This fully illustrated reference is packed with facts and information on every campaign from the election of 1788-89 through the hotly contested election of 2000.

How the "flattening of the world" has transformed politics--and what it means for the 2008 election The 2008 presidential campaign will be like none in recent memory: the first campaign in fifty years in which both the Democrats and the Republicans must nominate a new candidate, and the first ever in which the issues of globalization and technology will decide the outcome. Garrett M. Graff represents the people that all the candidates want to engage: young, technologically savvy, concerned about the future. In this far-reaching book, he asks: Will the two major parties seize the moment and run the first campaign of the new era, or will they run the last campaign all over again?

Allegations that widespread voter fraud is threatening to the integrity of American elections and American democracy itself have intensified since the disputed 2000 presidential election. The claim that elections are being stolen by illegal immigrants and unscrupulous voter registration activists and vote buyers has been used to persuade the public that voter malfeasance is of greater concern than structural inequities in the ways votes are gathered and tallied, justifying ever tighter restrictions on access to the polls. Yet, that claim is a myth. In The Myth of Voter Fraud, Lorraine C. Minnite presents the results of her meticulous search for evidence of voter fraud.

An award-winning statistician and a celebrated journalist investigate the 2004 election results. According to the official count, Bush beat Kerry in the 2004 US presidential election by a margin of three million votes. The exit polls, however, had predicted a margin of victory for Kerry of five million votes. Freeman and Bleifuss analyse the exit poll data and look at documented examples of conventional vote suppression and outright vote fraud. They investigate the possibility that enough election fraud occurred to determine the outcome of the presidential race.