Unit2 Voting and Voter Behavior

Elections, Voting, and Voter Behavior

Outline• Nominating Candidates

– Caucuses & Conventions– Primary Elections– Petition– Nominating Presidential Candidates

• Elections and Campaigns– Regulating Elections– Financing Elections– Hard & Soft Money– Presidential Elections

• Voting Rights and Voting Laws– History– Laws

• Voter Behavior– Influences on Voting Decisions– Voters and Nonvoters

Nominating Candidates

• Nominate: select a candidate to run for office

• 4 methods for being on the ballot:

– Caucus

– Convention

– Direct primary

– petition

The Caucus & Convention

• Caucus: party leaders meet and decide who will run for office

• Nominating convention: public meeting of party members to choose candidates

• Party bosses: influential party leaders

Primary Election

• Direct primary election: several candidates from the same party run against each other for the nomination

Two types of primary:

– Closed primary: limited to registered members of political parties

– Open primary: any registered voter

Nomination by Petition

• Petition: piece of paper that states a person wishes to run for office, a number of signatures is required to be considered.

• The more important the office, the more signatures needed

2008 Presidential Primaries

Elections & Campaigns

• Right to vote=basic to democracy

• Election Day

Regulating Elections:

– State v. Federal laws

– Election dates (1st Tuesday, following the 1st

Monday in November)

– Help America Vote Act (2002)

Financing Elections

• Campaigns require lots of money:

– Offices

– Campaign workers

– Advertisements

– Websites

• Where does the money come from?

– Private donors (expect favors)

– Public money ($3 contribution on income tax)

Campaign Finance Laws

Limits on Giving to Campaigns for Federal Office

Primary Election General Election Political Action Committee

National Party

No more than $2,000 to a single candidate

No more than $2,000 to a single candidate

No more than $5,000 to one PAC in a year

No more than $95,000 during two years between congressionalelections

Political Action Committee (PAC): a political organization formed by special interest groups such as companies and labor and professional organizations.

Examples: National Rifle Association (NRA), The American Medical Association (AMA), etc.

Hard & Soft Money

Hard Money

• Regulated by laws

• Money raised and spent by candidate themselves

Soft Money

• No real laws

• Money raised and spent on “party building” activities

2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act: The goal was to ban soft money, however, the result was that by the 2004 election, politicians had found a loophole by setting up Section 527 organizations. Much like PACs except these groups were not regulated.

Presidential Elections

• Electoral College

• January 6th (Congress counts votes)

• Election night news coverage

• Popular vote: total number of votes cast by citizens

• Electoral vote: number of votes that states have in the electoral college

Electoral College Map

http://politicalmaps.org/maps-of-the-2008-us-presidential-election/

Voting Rights• African Americans were not

considered citizens until 1868

• Women couldn’t vote until 1920

• Native Americans were not granted citizenship until 1924

• Youth vote was extended in 1971

• Suffragist: people who supported the right to vote for women

Voting Rights Laws

Law

• Fifteenth Amendment

• Voting Rights Act of 1965

• Twenty Fourth Amendment

Interference

• Grandfather clause

• Literacy test

• Poll tax

Voter Behavior

51%49%

Voted

Didn'tvote

Why do some citizens vote in every election and some never vote?

Registered Voters

Voter Generalizations

Democratic

Younger voters

African-Americans

High school graduates

Women (slightly more)

Catholics

Jews

Immigrants

Urban areas

Republican

High income

College graduates

Protestants

Some Latinos

Suburbs, rural areas

Straight-ticket voting: voting only for a party’s candidates

Voters & Nonvoters

Voters

• College graduates

• Higher income

• Over 45

• 64+ highest voting rates

• Women more than men

• Married people

• Don’t move around

• Religious attendees

Nonvoters

• High School graduates or less

• Low income

• Youth

• Single people

• People who move around

Political efficacy: the idea that a person can influence government by voting.

Why don’t people vote?

• Don’t meet residency requirements

• Never registered

• Feel little will change

• Happy with the status-quo

• No sense of political efficacy

• Average non-voter= male, under 35, single, low level of education, works at unskilled jobs

Precincts and Polling Places

Precincts

• A precinct is a voting district.

• Precincts are the smallest geographic units used to carry out elections.

• A precinct election board supervises the voting process in each precinct.

Chapter 7, Section 2

Polling Places

• A polling place is where the voters who live in a precinct go to vote.

• It is located in or near each precinct. Polling places are supposed to be located conveniently for voters.

Casting the Ballot

• Voting was initially done orally. It was considered “manly” to speak out your vote without fear of reprisal.

• Paper ballots began to be used in the mid-1800s. At first, people provided their own ballots. Then, political machines began to take advantage of the flexibility of the process to intimidate, buy, or manufacture votes.

• In the late 1800s, ballot reforms cleaned up ballot fraud by supplying standardized, accurate ballots and mandating that voting be secret.


History of the Ballot

Office-Group and Party-Column Ballots


Voting Machines and Innovations


• Electronic vote counting

has been in use since

the 1960s. Punch-card

ballots are often used to

cast votes.

• Vote-by-mail elections

have come into use in

recent years.

• Online voting is a trend

that may be encountered

in the near future.

Section 2 Review

1. Elections are held on(a) the first Wednesday after Halloween.

(b) the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

(c) the second Thursday after the first Monday in March.

(d) the first Monday in December.

2. The Office-Group Ballot encourages(a) voter fraud.

(b) split-ticket voting.

(c) voter dissatisfaction.

(d) the Democratic Party.


S E C T I O N 3

Money and Elections

• What are the issues raised by campaign spending?

• What are the various sources of campaign funding?

• How do federal laws regulate campaign finance?

• What role does the Federal Election Commission have in enforcing campaign finance laws?

• What loopholes exist in today’s campaign finance laws?

Campaign Spending


Sources of Funding


Small

contributors

Wealthy

supporters

Nonparty

groups such

as PACs

Temporary

fund-raising

organizations

Candidates Government

subsidies

Private and Public Sources of

Campaign Money

Regulating Campaign Financing


• Early campaign regulations were created in 1907, but feebly enforced.

• The Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) of 1971 was passed to replaced the former, ineffective legislation.

• The FECA Amendments of 1974 were passed in response to the Watergate scandal.

• Buckley v. Valeo invalidated some of the measures in the FECA Amendments of 1974. Most significantly, it also stipulated that several of the limits that the 1974 amendments placed on spending only apply to candidates who accept campaign money from the government, not those who raise money independently.

• The FECA Amendments of 1976 were passed in response to Buckley v. Valeo.

The Federal Election Commission

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) enforces:

• the timely disclosure of campaign finance information

• limits on campaign contributions

• limits on campaign expenditures

• provisions for public funding of presidential campaigns


Loopholes in the Law“More loophole than law…” —Lyndon Johnson

• Soft money—money given to State and local party organizations for “party-building activities” that is filtered to presidential or congressional campaigns. $500 million was given to campaigns in this way in 2000.

• Independent campaign spending—a person unrelated and unconnected to a candidate or party can spend as much money as they want to benefit or work against candidates.

• Issue ads—take a stand on certain issues in order to criticize or support a certain candidate without actually mentioning that person’s name.


Section 3 Review

1.Sources of campaign funding include (a) nonparty groups, such as political action committees.

(b) government subsidies.

(c) candidates’ personal funds.

(d) all of the above.

2.Under federal election legislature passed in the 1970s, candidates are not allowed to

(a) take government subsidies.

(b) use their own money in campaigns.

(c) take contributions of more than $1,000.

(d) all of the above.


Education

Unit2 Voting and Voter Behavior