W. W. Norton & Company | American Government Brief 10th Edition

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Chapter 10 - Elections

Chapter Summary

Introduction

Democratic elections benefit governments and political elites by serving as institutions of legitimation and social safety valves. At the same time, elections facilitate popular influence, promote the accountability of leaders, and offer social groups some measure of protection from government’s abuse of power. A democratic election is the collective selection of leaders and representatives which allows multiple principals to choose their agents. But as is the case in any principal-agent relationship, principals must seek to avoid problems of hidden information (adverse selection) and problems of hidden action (moral hazard).

1) Regulating the Electoral Process What factors determine the composition of the electorate? What are the decision rules by which voting is translated into electoral outcomes? How do variations in those rules regulate and control popular involvement in the selection of officeholders and the public policies they make?

· Manipulation of the composition of the electorate is perhaps the oldest device used to regulate voting. In America, suffrage restrictions as well as poll taxes, literacy tests, poll placement, personal registration requirements, and scheduling all have been used to limit electoral participation.

· Voter participation in American elections is quite low compared to other Western democracies; moreover, voter turnout declined throughout much of the twentieth century.

· Voter registration requirements in America have traditionally been onerous. This fact, along with the presence of traditionally weaker parties, helps to explain why turnout is lower in the United States than in several other democracies.

· Besides manipulating the composition of the electorate, governments also can manipulate electoral outcomes by establishing rules that set the criteria for winning and that define electoral districts.

o We tend to use a plurality system as our criteria for winning, which (compared to proportional representation systems, for example) tends to favor majorities over less advantaged groups.

o Drawing electoral boundaries, which is generally done every ten years following a census, is a political process that can be used for the purposes of partisan and racial gerrymandering.

· Most governments do not trust the public to decide every office and ours originally only entrusted the election of members of the House of Representatives directly to the people; several mechanisms “filter” popular influence and insulate decision-making from public sentiment.

o The Electoral College is a controversial mechanism for presidential selection, which occasionally results in the winner of the popular vote losing the presidency (examples of such scenarios include the elections of John Quincy Adams in 1824 and George W. Bush in 2000).

o Other institutional rules that influence electoral outcomes include the frequency of elections, the size of electoral districts, and the use of the Australian ballot.

· Direct democracy mechanisms are used in some states.

o Twenty-four states provide for referendum voting whereby citizens in elections directly approve or reject legislative proposals.

o Twenty-four states provide some form of initiative voting wherein citizens may place policy proposals on the ballot for a public vote.

o Eighteen states provide for recall elections wherein a public official can be removed from office (before his or her term has expired) by popular vote.

2) How Voters Decide What factors influence voters’ decisions in elections?

· Partisan loyalty is both a psychological attachment and an informational shortcut that allows voters to economize on information collection and processing when choosing between candidates, though the importance of party identification declined throughout the twentieth century.

· Voters sometimes choose the candidates closest to them on salient issues evaluating those candidates either prospectively (that is, based on the imagined future performance of the candidate) or retrospectively (that is, based on the past performance of the candidate or his or her party).

o In our system, the median voter theorem suggests more centrist candidates will be successful.

o The economy is frequently an important issue on which voters will evaluate parties and candidates.

· Candidates’ personal characteristics including race, ethnicity, religion, gender, geography, social background, appearance, and experience also affect voters’ decisions. Other relevant candidate characteristics include personality characteristics such as decisiveness, honesty, and vigor.

3) The 2004 and 2006 Elections What issues and strategies dominated the 2004 presidential elections? How were the results of those elections partially reversed in 2006?

· President George W. Bush’s senior political adviser, Karl Rove, emphasized three strategies during the president's first administration to ensure Bush's re-election in 2004:

o an expansive economic policy including tax cuts and low interest rates;

o early and ambitious fund-raising for the next campaign;

o and, the war on terror which encouraged Americans to look to their government (and the incumbent president) for leadership as people usually do in wartime.

· Still, the Democrats were not without their opportunities in 2004:

o Despite Bush’s economic efforts, economic growth was slow and job growth extremely limited during the first term;

o Despite Bush’s emphasis on the war on terror, the 9/11 Commission embarrassed the president by announcing that his administration had not been sufficiently attentive to the terrorist threat before 9/11. Moreover, many Americans felt that Bush had misrepresented the reasons for going to war with Iraq when weapons of mass destruction were not discovered.

o Democrats and liberal activists prepared for the coming election by raising a great deal of money of their own and registering millions of new Democratic voters.

· Republicans attempted to counter Democrats with their own voter registration campaigns, especially in so-called battleground states emphasizing moral and religious themes to mobilize religious voters; the Bush campaign also worked to discredit John Kerry as a “flip-flopper.”

· As the election approached, although Bush had a sizable lead, Kerry was deemed the winner of the first debate. With the race very close, both parties increased their mobilization efforts. It seems that the GOP's superior on-the-ground organization turned out enough religious conservatives to secure a narrow electoral victory for Bush.

· Missteps by the Bush Administration during 2005 (particularly after hurricanes Katrina and Rita) improved the Democrats’ position as they sought to take majorities in the House and Senate in the 2006 elections.

o Democratic Party organizations recruited high “quality” candidates, pursued a fifty-state strategy and raised significant amounts of money.

o Democrats also won significant support from independent voters besting Republicans 57 to 39 percent among that group.

o In the end, Democrats took back both the House of Representatives and the Senate (the latter by but a bare majority).

4) Campaign Finance What does the high cost of contemporary elections imply for electoral politics? What are the sources of campaign funds? How have campaign finance reform efforts performed?

· Contemporary campaigns are very expensive: The average winning candidate in a campaign for a seat in the House of Representatives spends between $500,000 and $1 million whereas the average winner of a Senate seat spends about $5 million.

· The sources of campaign funds are roughly equally divided four ways among: a) small, direct-mail contributions; b) PACs, or Political Action Committees, the fund-raising arms of interest groups; c) large individual gifts; and d) parties and the candidates themselves.

· The United States is one of the few advanced industrial nations that permits individual candidates to accept large private contributions; most democracies require either public funding, or require that large donations go to parties rather than to individual candidates.

· The recent Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) banned campaign spending by national party organizations, though critics charge that it sparked an increase in independent 527 committees.

· Money matters in contemporary American elections, and, because not all groups are equally wealthy and able to influence outcomes, the increasing importance of money raises questions about the ability of ordinary Americans to influence outcomes.

5) Do Elections Matter? Why is American voter turnout so low? Is it rational to vote? Why do elections matter as political institutions?

· Participation in American elections is abysmally low, in part, because weak American political parties (and the continued decline thereof) cannot overcome impediments to voter turnout caused by the relatively high costs of voting, unfavorable registration rules, and less competitive, vigorous campaigns.

· According to the collective-action principle, the large size of the electorate and the small likelihood that any individual participant will make a difference decreases the rationality of voting and promotes “free riding” among American voters.