Voting and Elections in the USA

Voting and Elections

• When the nation was founded, only white male Christian property owners could vote.
• The 15th Amendment (1870) prohibited denying the right to vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude, impacting African American men.
• The 19th Amendment (1920) gave women the right to vote, extending suffrage to a previously excluded group.
• The 26th Amendment (1971) impacted young Americans aged 18 to 20, lowering the voting age from 21 to 18.
• Voter participation in the U.S. tends to be lower compared to other democratic countries.
• Around 55% of the voting population participates in presidential elections.
• Midterm elections have about 40% voter turnout.
• Local elections see 20-30% voter participation.
• Fewer people vote in Congressional Elections (less than 33%).
• Popular vote reflects the total number of individual votes cast across the country for a presidential candidate.
• The Electoral College vote determines the winner of the presidential election (270 electoral votes are needed to win).
• In the 2016 election, Clinton won the popular vote (48.2%), while Trump (46.1%) won the electoral votes by 304 votes.
• In the 2020 election, Biden won the popular vote (51.3%) compared to Trump's (46.9%), and Biden won electoral votes by 306 votes.
• The individual voter is responsible for registering to vote.
• Voter registration requirements are controlled by both state and federal governments.
• Political candidates are selected through primary elections, caucuses, and party conventions.
• Impediments to voting include limited absentee voting, limited voting by mail, and reduced polling places.
• Consequences of these impediments include reduced voter participation.
• Decreased voter turnout is caused by frequent elections, weekday voting, and people unable to vote such as residential non-citizens, the mentally ill, those in jail and felons who did not register.
• Voting allows individuals to have a say in government.
• Voting influences local issues such as schools, roads, and public safety.
• Civic satisfaction comes from participating in democracy.
• The incumbent advantage is the edge a current officeholder has over a challenger due to name recognition, casework, and campaign financing.
• A divided government occurs when one political party controls the White House (executive branch) and another controls one or both houses of Congress (legislative branch).

Political Culture, Public Opinion, and Socialization

• American political culture includes shared values, beliefs, and practices shaping how Americans view government, politics, and their role as citizens.
• Public opinion is the collective attitudes, beliefs, and preferences of the general population on specific issues, policies, or societal matters.
• Individual opinion represents the personal views or attitudes of a single person.
• Public opinion is an aggregation of individual opinions, representing collective attitudes and beliefs on a particular issue.
• Political socialization is how individuals develop their political beliefs, values, attitudes, and behaviors.
• Agents of socialization include family, school, peer groups, and mass media, in approximate order of influence.
• Public opinion polling is a survey to measure public views on a topic.
• Factors affecting opinion polling include sample size, diversity, wording, method, and nonresponse bias.
• Information sources for government and politics: media, news, family, friends, education, political leaders.

The Media

• Social media is a largely unregulated media outlet.
• Most people get their information on government and politics from television.
• The internet will become the main source of information for elections and politics.
• Political candidates engage in negative campaigning by criticizing other candidates or parties instead of focusing on positive things.
• The most important role of the media is informing the public about current events, policies, and political issues.
• The news media focuses on sensationalism to grab attention.
• Muckraking investigates journalism that exposes corruption, scandals, and injustices.
• Yellow journalism uses exaggerated headlines, biased reporting, and focuses on sensational stories rather than factual accuracy.
• Scholarly research on network media content finds that traditional media outlets and journalists have been labeled mostly liberal.

Political Parties

• A political party is an organization of ideologically similar people that nominates and tries to elect members to office.
• Political parties function as intermediaries between individuals and government to attain their members' goals.
• Types of parties include Republicans & Democrats, third parties, ideological parties (libertarians), protest parties (populists), single-issue parties (Green Party), and splinter parties (progressives).
• The U.S. has a two-party system due to cultural consensus, historical precedents, core values, central party and electoral rules with restrictions based on minor parties.
• Political parties originated despite the founders' mistrust of them.
• The U.S. uses a winner-take-all system, where each district elects one person to office based on who won the most votes.
• A party platform gives candidates a clear political position for campaigning and voters a sense of what the candidates believe in and how they will address issues.
• Republicans typically hold views aligned with conservatism, emphasizing limited government, lower taxes, free-market capitalism, and individual liberties.
• Socially, Republicans support traditional values, gun rights, and restrictions on abortion.
• Democrats generally support progressive policies that emphasize social equality, economic fairness, and environmental protection.
• Democrats support healthcare, education, climate action, social justice, and economic policies.
• The future of both parties depends on appealing to growing groups like Hispanic and Asian American voters and younger generations like Millennials and Gen Z.
• Urban-rural divides and education levels will also shape both parties' strategies.

Interest Groups

• An interest group is a political organization that functions as intermediaries and seeks to influence public policy based on a particular common interest or concern.
• Types of interest groups include business and trade organizations, professional associations, organized labor, farm organizations, specialized groups, women's organizations, religious groups, public issue groups, single issue groups, ideological groups, and government lobbies.
• The most numerous interest groups are associated with business, as more than 50% are organized to protect economic interests.
• A collective good benefits every individual belonging to the same group, making it hard to exclude anyone from that benefit (e.g., TV, defense forces, law and order).
• Interest groups promote the interests or concerns of their members by influencing public policy, sometimes through pressure or lobbying.
• They protect economic interests, advance social movements, and seek government benefits or demand government regulations.
• An amicus curiae brief is a "friend of the court" brief filed by an individual or organization to present arguments in addition to those presented by the immediate parties.
• An iron triangle is a relationship that develops between the legislature, the bureaucrat, and the lobbyist.
• Direct lobbying tactics attempt to influence a legislator's vote through public relations, access to government officials, and providing information.
• Indirect lobbying tactics involve engaging the public through coalition building, molding public and elite opinion, and grassroots mobilization.
• Direct lobbying tactics are successful because they bring attention to administration policy changes.
• Grassroots lobbying involves regular people working together to influence government decisions by signing petitions, joining protests, or contacting officials.