Suffrage
All citizens at least 18 years of age are eligible to vote. (Prisoners, ex-felons, and individuals on probation or parole are prohibited, sometimes permanently, from voting in some states.) The history of voting rights in the United States has been one of gradual extension of the franchise. Religion, property ownership, race, and gender have disappeared one by one as legal barriers to voting. In 1870, through the Fifteenth Amendment, former slaves were granted the right to vote, though African Americans were subsequently still denied the franchise (particularly in the South) through devices such as literacy tests, poll taxes, and grandfather clauses. Only in the 1960s, through the Twenty-fourth Amendment (barring poll taxes) and the Voting Rights Act, were the full voting rights of African Americans guaranteed. Though universal manhood suffrage had theoretically been achieved following the American Civil War, woman suffrage was not fully guaranteed until 1920 with the enactment of the Nineteenth Amendment (several states, particularly in the West, had begun granting women the right to vote and to run for political office beginning in the late 19th century). Suffrage was also extended by the Twenty-sixth Amendment (1971), which lowered the minimum voting age to 18.
woman suffrage Woman suffrage advocates parading in an open car in support of ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which granted women the right to vote in federal elections.George Grantham Bain Collection/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (digital file no. 19032)
Voting and elections
Voters go to the polls in the United States not only to elect members of Congress and presidential electors but also to cast ballots for state and local officials, including governors, mayors, and judges, and on ballot initiatives and referendums that may range from local bond issues to state constitutional amendments (see referendum and initiative). The 435 members of the House of Representatives are chosen by the direct vote of the electorate in single-member districts in each state. State legislatures (sometimes with input from the courts) draw congressional district boundaries, often for partisan advantage (see gerrymandering); incumbents have always enjoyed an electoral advantage over challengers, but, as computer technology has made redistricting more sophisticated and easier to manipulate, elections to the House of Representatives have become even less competitive, with more than 90 percent of incumbents who choose to run for reelection regularly winning—often by significant margins. By contrast, Senate elections are generally more competitive.
polling placeA polling place sign posted at a polling station, November 2, 2010, in Drake, Kentucky. Tom Pennington—Getty Images/Thinkstock
Voters indirectly elect the president and vice president through the electoral college. Instead of choosing a candidate, voters actually choose electors committed to support a particular candidate. Each state is allotted one electoral vote for each of its senators and representatives in Congress; the Twenty-third Amendment (1961) granted electoral votes to the District of Columbia, which does not have congressional representation. A candidate must win a majority (270) of the 538 electoral votes to be elected president. If no candidate wins a majority, the House of Representatives selects the president, with each state delegation receiving one vote; the Senate elects the vice president if no vice presidential candidate secures an electoral college majority. A candidate may lose the popular vote but be elected president by winning a majority of the electoral vote (as George W. Bush did in the U.S. presidential election of 2000), though such inversions are rare. Presidential elections are costly and generate much media and public attention—sometimes years before the actual date of the general election. Indeed, some presidential aspirants have declared their candidacies years in advance of the first primaries and caucuses, and some White House hopefuls drop out of the grueling process long before the first votes are cast.
A certificate from Alabama showing the signatures of the state's electors in 2000. The nine electors voted for George W. Bush. Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Administration
Voting in the United States is not compulsory, and, in contrast to most other Western countries, voter turnout is quite low. In the late 20th and the early 21st century, about 50 percent of Americans cast ballots in presidential elections; turnout was even lower for congressional and state and local elections, with participation dropping under 40 percent for most congressional midterm elections (held midway through a president’s four-year term). Indeed, in some local elections (such as school board elections or bond issues) and primaries or caucuses, turnout has sometimes fallen below 10 percent. High abstention rates led to efforts to encourage voter participation by making voting easier. For example, in 1993 Congress passed the National Voter Registration Act (the so-called “motor-voter law”), which required states to allow citizens to register to vote when they received their driver’s licenses, and in 1998 voters in Oregon approved a referendum that established a mail-in voting system. In addition, some states now allow residents to register to vote on election day, polls are opened on multiple days and in multiple locations in some states, and Internet voting has even been introduced on a limited basis for some elections.
Money and campaigns
Campaigns for all levels of office are expensive in the United States compared with those in most other democratic countries. In an attempt to reduce the influence of money in the political process, reforms were instituted in the 1970s that required public disclosure of contributions and limited the amounts of contributions to candidates for federal office. Individuals were allowed to contribute directly to a candidate no more than $1,000 in so-called “hard money” (i.e., money regulated by federal election law) per candidate per election. The law, however, allowed labour unions, corporations, political advocacy groups, and political parties to raise and spend unregulated “soft money,” so long as funds were not spent specifically to support a candidate for federal office (in practice, this distinction was often blurry). Because there were no limits on such soft money, individuals or groups could contribute to political parties any sum at their disposal or spend limitlessly to advocate policy positions (often to the benefit or detriment of particular candidates). In the 2000 election cycle, it is estimated that more than $1 billion was spent by the Democratic and Republican parties and candidates for office, with more than two-fifths of this total coming from soft money contributions.