Download or read book Who s Counting written by John Fund and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2012-08-14 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Votes That Count and Voters Who Don t written by Sharon E. Jarvis and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2019-06-27 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Whose Votes Count written by Abigail M. Thernstrom and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1987 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A Twentieth Century Fund study."Includes indexes. Bibliography: p. [257]-302.

Download or read book Broken Ballots written by Douglas Jones and published by Center for the Study of Language and Information Publica Tion. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Black Votes Count written by Frank R. Parker and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2011-03-18 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Votes That Counted written by Howard Gillman and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2003-07-05 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The dramatic struggle over the outcome of the 2000 presidential election presented judges with an extraordinary political challenge, as well as a historic political temptation. In The Votes That Counted Howard Gillman offers a comprehensive yet critical assessment of how well courts coped with the competing expectations for impartial justice and favorable partisan results. Lively and authoritative, the book documents how the participants, the press, the academic community, and the public responded during these tension-filled thirty-six days. Gillman also provides a serious yet accessible overview of the legal strategies and debates-from briefs and oral arguments to final decisions. However, in explaining the behavior of courts, he moves beyond an analysis of law to also take into account the influences of partisanship, judicial ideology, and broader political and historical contexts. Appropriately, Gillman pays special attention to the judges whose behavior generated the most controversy—the battling justices of the Florida and United States Supreme Courts. After carefully reviewing the arguments for and against their decisions, he concludes that the five justices behind the Bush v. Gore decision acted outside what should be considered the acceptable boundaries of judicial power. Gillman ends with an analysis of why they chose such an unprecedented course of action and an assessment of whether their partisan intervention will have any lasting effect on the Supreme Court's reputation and authority.

Download or read book Making Votes Count written by Gary W. Cox and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1997-03-28 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Votes that Counted written by Howard Gillman and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Counting Every Vote written by Eric Shiraev and published by Potomac Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2008 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 2000 U.S. presidential election was not the first in American history that was exceptionally close or that produced highly disputed results. In 1801 Thomas Jefferson became president after an electoral gridlock, but only after Congress voted three dozen times to select the president. Charles Hughes lost in 1916 to Woodrow Wilson by losing in California by some 3,000 votes. In 1960 John F. Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon by only a fraction of a percentage point in a very controversial election. What would have happened if Aaron Burr, rather than Jefferson, had become president? What if Nixon had defeated Kennedy in 1960? What if Al Gore had become president in 2001 instead of George W. Bush? Using six cases, political scientists Robert Dudley and Eric Shiraev argue that engaging in this counterfactual exercise provides an excellent opportunity to revisit history, learn from its lessons, and relate to contemporary elections. The authors' aim is not to prove that their suggested scenarios would have certainly happened, but merely to show that they might have, and therein lies the importance of voting. Every vote counts, and the consequences can be enormous.

Download or read book Vote for US written by Joshua A. Douglas and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An expert on US election law presents an encouraging assessment of current efforts to make our voting system more accessible, reliable, and effective"--

Download or read book Whose Vote Counts written by Robert Richie and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2001-05-19 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Democracy takes place when the silent find their voice, and when we begin to listen to what they have to say. --Lani Guinier, from the Foreword In Whose Vote Counts?, Robert Richie and Steven Hill listen to what the silent are saying. They argue that we need a new way of electing our representatives to combat voter apathy and the leveling of political views. Such a system already exists in many parts of the world, including places in the United States: proportional representation. Leading activists respond in essays that illustrate what our country could look like if all qualified citizens became voters, and if they all felt their vote contributed to more than just the winning or losing tally. The New Democracy Forum is a series of short paperback originals exploring creative solutions to our most urgent national concerns.

Download or read book Integrity Counts written by Brad Raffensperger and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-11-02 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book By One Vote written by Michael F. Holt and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2008-10-15 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With electoral votes disputed in three states, a Democrat winning the popular vote, and the Supreme Court stepping in to overrule Florida court decisions, the presidential election of 1876 was an eerie precursor to that of 2000. Rutherford Hayes's defeat of Samuel Tilden has been dubbed the "fraud of the century"; now one of America's preeminent political historians digs deeper to unravel its real significance. This election saw the highest voter turnout of any in U.S. history-a whopping 82 percent-and also the narrowest margin of victory, as a single electoral vote decided the outcome. Michael Holt offers a fresh interpretation of this disputed election, not merely to rehash claims of fraud but to explain why it was so close. Examining the post-Civil War political environment, he particularly focuses on its most curious feature: that Republicans were the only party in history to retain the presidency in the middle of a severe depression after decisively losing the preceding off-year congressional elections. Holt begins with the election of 1872 to demonstrate how competition for Liberal Republicans shaped the campaign strategies of both parties. He stresses the critical but little-noted importance of Colorado statehood in August-which changed the size of the electoral-vote majority needed to win-and provides a new answer to the vexing question of why a Democratic-controlled Congress had admitted Colorado in time to participate in the presidential election, when without its votes Tilden would have won. And he argues that the high voter turnout was attributable both to Republicans exploiting fears of ex-Confederates recapturing control of the government and to long-apathetic southern Democrats reacting to war memories and Reconstruction realities. By One Vote shows how this election triggered a Republican revival and established the GOP as the Democrats' major competitor. Holt's compelling analysis of the dispute over electoral votes also explains why charges of Republican fraud are questionable-and how Democrats were just as guilty of corruption. A masterly retelling of this controversial episode, Holt's study captures the mood of the country and testifies to the power that hatreds and fears aroused by the Civil War still exercised over the American people.

Download or read book Count Them One by One written by Gordon A. Martin and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2011-01-05 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Count My Vote written by Steven Rosenfeld and published by Alternet Books. This book was released on 2008 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Counting on the Latino Vote written by Louis DeSipio and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Latinos, along with other new immigrants, are not being incorporated into U.S. politics as rapidly as their predecessors, raising concerns about political fragmentation along ethnic lines. In Counting on the Latino Vote, Louis DeSipio uses the first national studies of Latinos to investigate whether they engage in bloc voting or are likely to do so in the future. To understand American racial and ethnic minority group politics, social scientists have largely relied on a black-white paradigm. DeSipio gives a more complex picture by drawing both on the histories of other ethnic groups and on up-to-date but underutilized studies of Hispanics' political attitudes, values, and behaviors. In order to explore the potential impact of Hispanics as an electorate, he analyzes the current Latino body politic and projects the possible voting patterns of those who reside in the United States but do not now vote.

Download or read book Principles of the Law Election Administration written by and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: