election

Originally posted on Jan. 19, 2016

In every election cycle, news stories tout the potential of online activism to engage people who have historically been less engaged in offline politics – particularly young people, women, and people with less education and income. Could this be true? If so, there would be new possibilities for enlarging American democracy – in an age when one in three eligible U.S. adults skips voting in presidential elections and two thirds of potential voters fail to show up in midterm elections.

But what if online activism mainly offers ways for citizens who are regularly politically active offline to amplify their already loud voices? In that case, online political opportunities would largely reinforce existing political inequalities.

Using national data on Americans who engage in various types of online and offline political participation, our research examines the evidence about these competing “new mobilization” and “reinforcement” perspectives on the impact of online activism. more...

A Scholars Strategy Network Scholar Spotlight. Originally posted on November 3, 2014

In a democracy, the equal right to vote should be sacrosanct, but across the country many states are throwing up new obstacles to voting.

SSN experts probe why this is happening – and explain how constructive reforms could enlarge voter participation and insure the integrity of U.S. elections

In 2013, in Shelby v. Holder, a divided Supreme Court invalidated a section of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that had required states with a history of racial discrimination in voting to seek federal approval before making changes to their voting rules. Given a free hand, Texas, Mississippi, North Carolina and other states jumped to pass new rules that have the effect of making it harder for many minority and low-income citizens to vote. The impact will be felt immediately in those states, but the issue matters to Americans everywhere. As Yale University’s Marcus Anthony Hunter explained in the Washington Post on Martin Luther King Day, “Voter Suppression is a Threat to All.”

A CONVENIENT UNTRUTH

Fraud by individual voters in the modern United States is vanishingly rare, so the claim that new voter restrictions are necessary to combat such fraud does not hold water. Yet just because an idea is demonstrably false does not mean that it cannot powerfully shape public policy. New SSN briefs unravel what is really going on.

> The Misleading Myth of Voter Fraud in American Elections
Lorraine C. Minnite, Rutgers University-Camden

A review of thousands of prosecutors’ records and media reports shows that the average American is more likely to be hit by lightning than to commit individual fraud at the polls.

> Convincing Evidence that States Aim to Suppress Minority Voting 
Keith Gunnar Bentele and Erin O’Brien, University of Massachusetts Boston 

New voter restrictions are most likely in Republican-controlled states where growing groups of African American and Latino voters are turning out to vote in increasing numbers. more...

On August 14, 2012 Wisconsin held a primary election and Governor Scott Walker brought his son to the polls to register to vote and cast his ballot. Months later, Walker announced his intention to eliminate the very same Election Day Registration system his son had used. But his proposal sparked an avalanche of opposition – from election administrators, the League of Women Voters and civil rights groups, and Wisconsinites of all party persuasions – prompting the normally resolute Walker to drop the idea. more...

Most Americans depend on wages, salaries, and benefits from working-class jobs. But public offices are overwhelmingly occupied by people from very economically privileged backgrounds – officials who often set aside the concerns of working Americans when public policies are debated, enacted, and put into effect. Correcting this glaring imbalance in the backgrounds of officeholders requires many efforts – including programs to identify, recruit, and support political candidates from the working class.

Candidate outreach programs sponsored by labor unions already exist in many places – and they have demonstrated great promise. When candidates from blue-collar and middle-class backgrounds mount well-prepared election campaigns, they usually prove appealing to the general voting public. Once in office, working-class Americans are more likely than other elected leaders to fight for workers’ concerns about workplace protections, business regulation, tax policy, and educational and social safety net programs. Programs that recruit and support more of these working-class candidates represent an important opportunity to make government at all levels more democratically responsive. more...

Women and minorities have made major gains in the ranks of elected U.S. public office-holders—but at all levels of government the progress has been incomplete and uneven. Consider, for example, America’s fifty state legislatures. Forty years ago, one would have been hard-pressed to find anyone other than a white man serving in any of these legislatures, yet women and various minorities now claim about one-third of the seats. But there are big variations across the states.

By now, women are about 24% of all state legislators, yet their contingents range from ten percent in South Carolina to forty percent in Colorado. African American legislators average 8.1% overall, but the largest contingents (ranging from 20% to 23%) appear in Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, and Alabama. Latinos are only 2.9% of all state legislators, and they are concentrated in New Mexico, Texas, California, New York, Nevada, and Arizona.

Apart from population ratios, why do state legislatures vary in diversity—and what difference does it make? Political scientists have made progress in answering these important questions. more...

Incomes are rising for the wealthiest ten percent of Americans—indeed, skyrocketing for the top one percent and one percent of the one percent—while wages and salaries have stayed largely flat for everyone else over the past several decades. As such disparities become undeniable, political scientists are paying renewed attention to inequality in politics. How have such glaring gaps grown, many ask, in a country we suppose to be a vibrant pluralistic democracy?

Not long ago, most students of American politics believed there were no permanent class divisions and posited that U.S. politics involves multiple, overlapping interest groups, any of which can exercise leverage by organizing and competing. Recently, however, this view has given way to debates about the United States as a “democratic oligarchy” where corporations and fat cats get their way on the things that matter most to them, especially taxes, public budgets, and business regulation. more...

Enterprises generating wind and solar power are growing fast in Europe, Asia, and the United States. As countries seek to limit fossil fuel emissions that spur global warming, the search for cleaner energy sources is on. Thirty years ago, the wind and solar industries did not exist, but now they are coming into their own, actively nurtured by governments across the globe.

On a good site with convenient access to transmission lines, wind power is highly competitive with power generated from fossil fuels like coal and oil. Texas and Iowa alone have installed over 15,000 megawatts of wind-power generation, equal to the energy that can be generated by fifteen nuclear power plants. In the last couple of years, solar prices have dropped as much as fifty percent, reaching parity with other sources in parts of Europe and the United States. California will soon have solar power capacity equal to several large nuclear power plants. more...

The outcomes of the elections held on November 6, 2012 will have a big impact on students and other young Americans. The presidential candidates and their parties have taken sharply different stands on college costs, job opportunities, health care, social issues, voting rights, and investments in the nation’s future – all issues of special relevance to young people.

Paying for College – and Debt after Graduation

Since 1985, the price of a college degree has risen at more than twice the rate of inflation. Americans now owe more for student loans than for credit card debt. In response, President Obama increased Pell grants, simplified student aid applications, made it easier for ex-students to repay loans, and ended unnecessary subsidies to banks. The Obama administration has also moved to help students get accurate information on the costs and benefits of various colleges and universities. more...

How is 2012 shaping up in the long march of women, the U.S. majority, toward claiming their share of national public offices? We know that the Democrats and Republicans are running all-male slates for president and vice president, but what about Congress?  This should be an especially promising year—the chance for another “Year of the Woman” comparable to 1992, when record numbers of women ran and unusually large numbers won. That year actually turned out to be more a “year of the Democratic woman” than an across-the-board change in both parties, and the same pattern in shaping up for 2012.

Why 2012 Should Be Promising for Women

The 2012 election is the first following the 2010 Census. Many states have redrawn districts, so new openings have emerged for which would-be candidates often wait for up to a decade. Newcomers have the best chance to succeed in freshly drawn districts and in redrawn districts where re-situated incumbents must appeal to new voters. These are ideal situations for women candidates to run without having to face off against already ensconced male opponents. more...

A “grand strategy” can help America meet the challenges of a changing world – such as international terrorism, global environmental and economic instability, and the rise of new national powers. To approach foreign policy strategically requires defining America’s most important goals and then lining up available resources – money, military forces, diplomats, and expertise – to work consistently toward achieving those goals, through the twists and turns of daily events and unpredictable crises. Grand strategy is a conceptual framework that helps us use our power wisely by connecting day-to-day initiatives to our highest and most enduring national ends.

The idea of grand strategy is very much in vogue. Since the end of the Cold War, politicians and pundits alike have proclaimed the need for a fresh, comprehensive approach to America’s relationships with other nations. But important as grand strategy may be, it is also difficult. My research studies the past to illuminate challenges and possibilities for today. more...