scheduled. (See Table 11-8.) This separation of gubernatorial and presidential races may help candidates of the
party that is out of power nationally.*
for more information about the gubernatorial issues, see:
www.nga.org
ELECTION 2000: A CASE STUDY
In the extraordinarily close, disputed election of 2000 the
Republican nominee, Texas Governor George W. Bush,
defeated Vice President Al Gore, his Democratic opponent. Bush’s victory came after a tumultuous and divisive
post-election legal and political struggle to determine
who won Florida’s 25 electoral votes—and, with them,
the presidency. Bush carried 30 of the 50 states and won
271 electoral votes to 266 for Al Gore. But for many suspenseful days that stretched into weeks, the nation and
the world did not know who would be the next president
of the United States. The outcome marked the return of
the Republican Party to power in the White House after
eight years of Democratic rule. The results were:
George W. Bush (R)
Al Gore (D)
Ralph Nader (Green)
Pat Buchanan (Reform)
Others
Totals
Popular
Vote*
Electoral
Vote
Percentage
50,456,169
50,996,116
2,831,066
447,798
595,176
271
266
0
0
0
47.9%
48.4%
2.7%
0.4%
0.6%
105,326,325
537
100.0%
November 8, 2000: The Indianapolis Star got it right.
AP/Wide World
Third, how would the American economy be performing by the summer and fall of 2000? If the bouyant
economy continued to do well (see Table 11-9), the
chances of a Democratic victory would be increased.
But if the economy began to falter, the Democrats
would lose what they hoped would be one of their
strongest campaign assets.
Finally, would the Democratic cause be hurt by the
third-party candidacy of Ralph Nader, running again on
TABLE 11-9
Annual Rates of Inflation and
Unemployment in the United States,
1980–2000
*Totals as of December 22, 2000, The Associated Press.
The Democrats
As the Democrats awaited the presidential year of 2000,
they realized that four factors could have a powerful
effect on their party’s prospects.
First, who would the Democrats nominate for president? Under the Twenty-second Amendment, President
Bill Clinton, a Democrat, was barred from running for a
third term. It was almost universally assumed that his vice
president, Al Gore, would seek the presidency; but would
other Democrats give Gore a fight for the nomination?
Second, how popular—or unpopular—would the
Clinton administration be in 2000? The greater the president’s approval rating in the polls, it was assumed, the
better the chances might be that another Democrat
could be elected to succeed him.
*In 1942 only 10 states with four-year gubernatorial terms scheduled
their election for governor midway through the president’s term. By
1962 the number of such states stood at 20; for 1990 it was 34. Adapted
from Congressional Quarterly, Politics in America (Washington, D.C.:
Congressional Quarterly, May 1969), pp. 148–155; and Congressional
Quarterly, Weekly Reports.
342
CHAPTER 11
VOTING BEHAVIOR
AND
ELECTIONS
1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000*
Inflation
Unemployment
13.5%
10.4%
6.1%
3.2%
4.3%
3.6%
1.9%
3.6%
4.4%
4.6%
5.4%
4.2%
3.0%
3.0%
2.6%
2.8%
3.3%
1.7%
1.6%
2.7%
3.4%
7.1%
7.6%
9.7%
9.6%
7.4%
7.1%
6.9%
6.1%
5.5%
5.3%
5.6%
6.8%
7.5%
6.9%
6.1%
5.6%
5.4%
4.9%
4.5%
4.2%
4.0%
*2000 figures are averaged for the first 10 months of the year.
SOURCE: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Vice President Al Gore on the campaign trail in
Atlanta during the 2000 presidential race.
AP/Wide World
the Green Party ticket? In 1996, Nader had run in some
states and had polled 685,000 votes—many of them, it
was believed, votes that otherwise would have gone to
the Democratic presidential ticket. In a close presidential contest in 2000, Democrats reasoned, a new and
more vigorous candidacy by Ralph Nader might hurt
their party severely.
As expected, Vice President Al Gore announced in
June 1999 that he would seek the Democratic nomination. Several other prominent Democrats considered
challenging Gore for the nomination—including Senator
John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, Senator Bob Kerrey
of Nebraska, and Congressman Richard Gephardt of
Missouri, the Democratic minority leader in the House
of Representatives. But in the end, they decided not to
run for president in 2000. The one prominent Democrat
who did challenge Gore was Bill Bradley, a former senator from New Jersey and onetime professional basketball
star, who had served for 18 years in the Senate.
At first, Bradley concentrated much of his campaigning in New Hampshire, a state that, as usual, was scheduled to hold the nation’s first presidential primary, on
February 1, 2000. By the beginning of September 1999,
public opinion polls suggested that Bradley was running
even with the vice president in New Hampshire; and many
Democrats felt that the Gore campaign was faltering. On
September 29, Gore announced a sweeping restructuring
of his campaign staff. He also declared that his campaign
headquarters would be moving from Washington, D.C., to
Nashville, Tennessee, in his home state.39
In December, Bradley announced that he would also
make a major effort to win the Democratic caucuses in
Iowa. On January 24, Gore scored a decisive victory in
Iowa, winning the Democratic caucuses by a margin of
2 to 1. Eight days later, Gore won a fiercely contested
and narrow victory over Bradley in New Hampshire, by
76,527 votes to 70,295.
After those twin defeats in Iowa and New Hampshire,
much of the energy seemed to go out of the Bradley cam-
paign. Five weeks later, on Super Tuesday, March 7,
2000, when Democratic primaries were held in 13 states,
Gore won them all. Two days later, on March 9, Bradley
announced that he was suspending his campaign. The
race for the Democratic nomination was over.40
The Republicans
In June 1999, nearly a year and a half before the 2000
election, George W. Bush, the governor of Texas and the
son of former President George Bush, announced his
candidacy for the Republican nomination. That same
month, Senator John McCain of Arizona also declared
that he was a candidate. Senator McCain had been a
military hero during the Vietnam War; he survived for
five and a half years in North Vietnamese prisons after
his plane had been shot down. He had also become well
known as the cosponsor of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill.
But Governor Bush quickly emerged as the frontrunner for the Republican nomination. By December
1999, he had amassed a record-setting $67 million in campaign funds and had won early endorsements from a large
number of Republican members of Congress, governors,
and conservative leaders.41 In fact, Bush’s early political
strength and the enormous amount of money that had
poured in to his campaign forced close to half of the
potential Republican field out of the race well before the
primaries began. Those who announced they would not
seek the Republican nomination, or who ended their campaigns early, included former Vice President Dan Quayle;
Elizabeth Dole, a former cabinet member and head of the
Red Cross; Representative John R. Kasich of Ohio; and
former Governor Lamar Alexander of Tennessee.42
By the end of 1999, just five candidates remained
in the race besides Governor Bush: Senator McCain;
Steve Forbes, a multimillionaire publisher; Senator
Orrin G. Hatch of Utah; Alan Keyes, a former State
Department official; and Gary Bauer, the former head of
Election 2000: A Case Study
343
Texas Governor George W. Bush looking for
votes on a college campus in Charleston,
South Carolina in 2000.
AP/Wide World
the Family Research Council and, like Keyes, an articulate conservative.
Senator McCain announced that he would not campaign actively in Iowa. Instead, he concentrated his energies in New Hampshire, criss-crossing the state in a bus
labeled “The Straight Talk Express,” and appearing at
more than 100 town meetings. When the voters of New
Hampshire went to the polls on February 1, they gave
John McCain a stunning victory over Bush. McCain defeated the Texas governor by 19 percentage points.43
McCain’s victory in New Hampshire was followed
by an upswing of support for the Arizona senator in
other states. But it was also clear that the Bush supporters were better organized and better financed than
McCain’s in many parts of the country. Bush won the
crucial South Carolina primary on February 19—the
first Republican primary in the South. And on Super
Tuesday, March 7, although McCain won in four more
New England states, Bush was the winner in eight
states, including three states—Ohio, New York, and
California—that would send large delegations to the
Republican convention. Two days after Super Tuesday,
Senator McCain announced: “I am no longer an active
candidate for my party’s nomination for president.” The
battle for the Republican nomination, like the Democratic contest, was effectively over.44
April to July 2000, and the Republican
and Democratic Conventions
In the relatively quiet period after April, each party prepared for its national convention. Throughout these
months, to the distress of Democratic partisans, Bush
generally ran ahead of Gore in the public opinion polls.
Bush led by 6 percentage points in the Gallup poll at the
end of April, and in late July his lead was even greater.
(See Table 11-10.) On July 25, Bush announced that his
choice for his vice presidential running mate was Dick
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CHAPTER 11
VOTING BEHAVIOR
AND
ELECTIONS
Cheney, a former member of Congress with extensive
experience in Washington who had served on the White
House staff and in the cabinet.
The harmonious Republican National Convention in
Philadelphia (July 31–August 3) was a great success for
the GOP. The party’s leading supporters among minority
groups, including General Colin Powell, were prominently
featured; and the four days were capped by a strong performance by Bush himself in his acceptance speech.
When the Republican convention was over, Bush led Gore
in the polls by 54 to 37 percent. (See Table 11-10.)
The Democrats now made plans to launch a counterattack, at their own convention in Los Angeles on
August 14–17. But as the Democrats began to gather on
the West Coast that month, they faced a major strategic
problem. Democrats realized that their candidate, Al
Gore, would have to overcome a special challenge in the
fall campaign. Gore had been President Clinton’s handpicked choice for vice president, and had served in the
Clinton administration for eight years. Despite Clinton’s
impeachment in 1998 and his much publicized relationship with Monica Lewinsky, Clinton’s job approval ratings in the polls remained high—unusually high for an
American president nearing the end of his second term.
(See Table 11-11.) But when prospective voters were
asked whether they approved of President Clinton’s “personal behavior,” they said they disapproved by a margin
of 2 to 1.* There were both pluses—and minuses—for
Gore in being closely associated with Clinton.
As the opening day of the Democratic National
Convention approached, Vice President Gore sought to
distance himself from Clinton. In a dramatic move,
*On November 4–7, 1999, when a national sample of the U.S. public was
polled, 28 percent of those interviewed said that they “approved” of
President Clinton’s personal behavior, and 61 percent “disapproved.” A
similar poll taken October 17–18, 2000, found that 30 percent “approved”
of Clinton’s personal behavior, and 60 percent “disapproved.” See
Voter.com, online at <www.voter.com>.
Gore chose Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut
as his vice presidential running mate. Lieberman had
been the most prominent Democrat to speak out and
criticize Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal,
declaring on the Senate floor: “Such behavior is not just
inappropriate, it is immoral.”45 Lieberman was also the
first Jewish candidate to be selected for a major-party
presidential ticket. Then, on the final night of the convention, in a further attempt to establish his own independent identity, Gore told the cheering delegates
gathered in the Staples Center in Los Angeles: “I stand
here tonight as my own man.”
It was the high point of a convention that had begun
three days earlier with a farewell address by President
Clinton. Later, the delegates also heard a speech by
Caroline Kennedy, President John F. Kennedy’s only
surviving child. Just as the Republicans had two weeks
earlier, the Democrats seemed to get a “convention
bounce” in the polls from the viewers’ response to the
televised convention proceedings.
The first Gallup poll taken after the Democratic convention reported that Gore was now 1 percentage point
ahead of Bush; allowing for sampling error, the race was
a toss-up. And two weeks after that, following the Labor
Day weekend, the traditional starting point for a fall general election campaign, the Gallup poll reported that Gore
still held a modest lead over Bush. (See Table 11-10.)
Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan
As Bush and Gore prepared to do battle in the autumn of
2000, two other presidential candidacies attracted intense
interest and attention among campaign strategists. One
was Pat Buchanan, a conservative commentator and former aide to President Nixon, who emerged as the new
standard-bearer of the Reform Party that Ross Perot had
led in 1996. The other was consumer advocate Ralph
Nader, the candidate of the Green Party.
In April, Buchanan was drawing 4 percent of the
total vote in the Gallup poll, the same percentage as
TABLE 11-10
Voter Support for Bush, Gore, Nader, and Buchanan: The Gallup Poll’s Four-Way Trial Heats
between April and Election Eve, 2000
Date of Interviews
April 28–30, 2000
June 6–7, 2000
July 25–26, 2000
For Bush
For Gore
For Nader
For Buchanan
For Others;
Don’t know
47%
46%
50%
41%
41%
39%
4%
6%
4%
4%
2%
1%
4%
5%
6%
1%
1%
4%
3%
2%
1%
2%
7%
1%
1%
4%
7%
1%
1%
5%
7%
1%
5%
Republican National Convention (July 31–August 3)
August 4–5, 2000
August 11–12, 2000
54%
55%
37%
39%
4%
2%
Democratic National Convention (August 14–17)
August 18–19, 2000
September 5–7, 2000
46%
43%
47%
46%
3%
3%
“Debate over the Debates” (first half of September)
September 18–20, 2000
October 1–3, 2000
41%
41%
51%
49%
3%
2%
First Presidential Debate (October 3)
October 5–7, 2000
October 8–10, 2000
49%
45%
41%
45%
4%
2%
Second presidential debate (October 11)
October 13–15, 2000
47%
44%
3%
Third presidential debate (October 17)
October 18–20, 2000
October 22–24, 2000
November 1–3, 2000
November 5–6, 2000
51%
48%
47%
47%
40%
43%
43%
45%
4%
3%
5%
4%
1%
1%
0%
1%
4%
5%
5%
3%
Election Results
00%
00%
00%
0%
0%
SOURCE: Data provided by the Gallup poll.
Election 2000: A Case Study
345
TABLE 11-11
President Clinton’s Job Rating, 1996–2000*
Date of Interviews
Approve
Disapprove
Clinton reelected with 49% of the vote (November 1996)
Clinton’s second inauguration (January 1997)
November 21–24, 1996
58%
35%
January 30–February 2, 1997
60%
31%
November 21–23, 1997
61%
30%
No Opinion
7%
9%
9%
Monica Lewinsky scandal becomes public;
Clinton denies having had sexual relations with Lewinsky (January 1998)
February 13–15, 1998
July 7–8, 1998
66%
61%
30%
34%
4%
5%
Clinton addresses the American people; reports that he did
have a relationship with Lewinsky that was “inappropriate” (August 1998)
September 11–12, 1998
63%
34%
3%
Kenneth Starr, independent counsel, submits report to Congress
with details of the Clinton-Lewinsky relationship;
report asserts that Clinton had obstructed justice (September 1998)
October 9–12, 1998
65%
32%
3%
Midterm congressional elections; Democrats gain seats in House,
and do not lose strength in the Senate (November 3, 1998)
November 13–15, 1998
66%
31%
3%
House votes to impeach President Clinton (December 19, 1998)
December 19–20, 1998
73%
25%
2%
Trial of Clinton begins in the Senate (January 1999)
January 22–24, 1999
February 9, 1999
69%
70%
29%
27%
2%
3%
Senate votes not to convict Clinton (February 12, 1999)
February 19–21, 1999
July 13–14, 1999
January 17–19, 2000
66%
59%
62%
30%
37%
35%
4%
4%
7%
Clinton’s final State of the Union address (January 2000)
February 4–6, 2000
May 5–7, 2000
62%
57%
33%
36%
4%
7%
Republican National Convention (July 2000)
Democratic National Convention (August 2000)
August 29–September 5, 2000
October 6–9, 2000
62%
58%
35%
37%
3%
5%
*Responses to the question: “Do you approve or disapprove of the way Bill Clinton is handling his job as president?”
SOURCE: Data provided by the Gallup poll.
Nader had. (See Table 11-10.) Many observers assumed
that a large numer of those Buchanan votes might go to
Bush, if Buchanan were not on the ballot. But Buchanan
was forced to suspend active campaigning for a time
while he underwent major surgery. And after midsummer, virtually every national poll reported his voter
support at 1 percent or less. Perhaps the most important aspect of the Buchanan candidacy was that it was
Buchanan—not Perot—who was running on the Reform
346
CHAPTER 11
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AND
ELECTIONS
Party ticket in 2000. Perot had received nearly 8 million
votes when he ran for president in 1996. Although Perot
was not on the ballot in the year 2000, the election outcome might be greatly influenced by the votes of those
former Perot supporters.
In contrast to the fading electoral appeal of Pat
Buchanan, voter support for Ralph Nader was more
persistent. In the Gallup polls it peaked at 6 percent in
early June and still stood at 4 or 5 percent in the final
Consumer advocate Ralph Nader, campaigning
for president on the Green Party ticket in 2000
AP/Wide World
two pre-election polls. (See Table 11-10.) It was widely
assumed that Nader cut into Gore’s voter support more
than Bush’s; and during the closing weeks of the campaign Gore spent considerable time trying to persuade
prospective Nader voters to switch their support to the
Democratic presidential ticket.
The General Election Campaign
As the Labor Day weekend came to a close, there were just
9 weeks remaining until Election Day. As it turned out,
those 9 weeks seemed to break almost evenly into three
distinct phases. The first three weeks were dominated by
a “debate over the debates,” as the Bush campaign and
the Gore campaign argued over the character and the timing of the proposed presidential and vice presidential
televised debates. During the next three weeks, attention
focused on the debates themselves—and on the voters’
response to what they saw and heard. The final three
weeks were a sprint to the finish, as both candidates campaigned frantically to motivate their own supporters to
turn out and vote. Both Bush and Gore concentrated their
efforts on states where the race was close.
Going into the fall campaign, Gore had had more
experience than Bush in high-pressure nationally televised debates. Some observers therefore assumed that
Gore would perform better than Bush in a series of formal debates on television. The nonpartisan Commission
on Presidential Debates, a group that had conducted
debates in previous presidential elections, proposed that
there should be four debates from October 3 to October
17—three between the two major-party presidential
candidates, and one featuring the two candidates for
vice president. Nader and Buchanan, to their great distress, were excluded by the commission from the presidential debates.
Vice President Gore said that he was prepared to
participate in all of the presidential debates proposed by
the commission. Governor Bush, however, was initially
reluctant to agree to the commission plan. His representatives argued instead for different, more informal
formats, suggesting one debate moderated by NBC’s
Tim Russert, and another with CNN’s Larry King.46 As
the controversial “debate over the debates” dragged on
during the first part of September, Democrats began to
charge that Bush was afraid to debate Gore. In the end
Bush agreed to participate in three debates on the dates
the commission had originally proposed—October 3,
11, and 17. The Bush camp also agreed to a vice presidential debate on October 5. In one of the first Gallup
polls taken after the debate controversy ended, covering
the period September 18–20, Gore had opened up a sizable lead over Bush. Gore now led the Texas governor by
10 percentage points. (See Table 11-10.)
The first debate between Bush and Gore took place
in Boston on October 3, with an estimated television
audience of 50 million viewers.47 The two candidates
seemed to battle fairly evenly as they discussed the issues;
but many viewers disliked Gore’s debating style.48 Some
criticized him for interrupting and being too aggressive,
and others felt he did not show proper respect for his
opponent, sometimes sighing audibly at Bush’s remarks.
The Gallup poll taken in a three-day period shortly after
the first debate suggested that the relative strength of the
two candidates in the electorate had been reversed. Bush
now led Gore by 8 percentage points. In addition, voter
support for the man who wasn’t there in the debate,
Ralph Nader, had doubled. (See Table 11-10.)
In the days that followed, it was clear that the Republicans were heartened by their candidate’s showing
in the first debate, and that Gore was startled and shaken
by the public response to his debate performance. In the
Election 2000: A Case Study
347
“And now with a rebuttal . . .”
Copyright © The New Yorker Collection
Richter 1979 from cartoonbank.com.
All rights reserved.
second debate, held at Wake Forest University in
Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on October 11, a subdued Gore changed his debate tactics and attempted to
be conciliatory, saying six times of Bush’s comments,
“I agree.” Many observers regarded Gore’s performance
in the second debate as weak, and a national post-debate
poll reported that 47 percent of those interviewed felt
Bush had “won” the debate. Only 31 percent said that
Gore had won.49
The third and final presidential debate was held in
St. Louis on October 17, amid somber and dramatic circumstances. Missouri’s popular Democratic Governor
Mel Carnahan, who was his party’s candidate for the
U.S. Senate, had been killed in a plane crash the previous evening. There was some discussion of canceling the
debate, but in the end the decision was made to
proceed—and to begin the evening with a tribute to
Carnahan. Many observers felt that Gore’s performance
was better in this third debate than it had been in the first
two; but the Gallup tracking polls taken during the three
days that followed suggested that Bush still held the lead.
He was now running ahead of Gore by 11 points. (See
Table 11-10.) If Gore had won the “debate over the
debates” in September, it seemed clear that overall, Bush
had won the debates themselves in October.
In the final three weeks before Election Day, both
campaigns appeared to adjust—and readjust—their
schedules several times in response to the rapidly changing dynamics of the race. Governor Bush made several
visits to Oregon and Washington, states once assumed to
be safely in Gore’s column but where a large expected
vote for Nader had now tightened the race. Gore spent
considerable time in a cluster of closely contested states,
pleading with potential Nader voters not to “waste their
vote” and arguing that a vote for Nader was in effect a
vote for Bush. Nader continued to campaign actively,
hoping to win at least 5 percent of the total vote so that
the Green Party would qualify for federal campaign
348
CHAPTER 11
VOTING BEHAVIOR
AND
ELECTIONS
funds in the next presidential election in 2004. And both
major parties concentrated on “GOTV” drives, efforts to
“get out the vote” of their core supporters.
In the final two days before the balloting, both Gore
and Bush spent much of their time campaigning in
Florida, a state that both parties regarded as crucial. Most
of the national polls still had Bush slightly ahead of Gore.
Those same polls suggested, however, that Gore had narrowed the gap during the final days of the campaign.
Politicians often believe that bad weather can discourage voters from going to the polls. On Election Day
2000, it was sunny or partly sunny along much of the
East Coast from Baltimore to Boston. The afternoon
high temperatures reached into the 60s as far north as
the southern parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois.
There were showers, however, around the Great Lakes
and in much of the South, and more severe weather
in the Plains States and part of the Rocky Mountains.
On the West Coast, the weather was generally favorable. By midday, there were reports of heavy turnouts
in some of the states where the race was thought to be
closest; and, for only the second time in the nation’s
history, more than 100 million Americans were going
to the polls.
As the American people sat down before their television sets that evening to watch their votes be counted,
it is doubtful that many of them were prepared for the
tumultuous events that followed. Beginning at 7:47 P.M.
EST, the major television networks declared that Gore
had carried the crucial state of Florida, with 25 electoral
votes. Soon afterward, Michigan and Pennsylvania, two
closely watched states with sizable electoral votes, were
also called for Gore. It began to look as though Gore
would win. Then, at 9:54 P.M., the television networks
started to retract their previous award of Florida to Gore.
The Sunshine State, they now said, was “too close to call.”
And Bush was winning several states that the Democrats
had hoped to carry, including New Hampshire, Missouri,
West Virginia, Arkansas, and, most startling of all, Vice
President Gore’s home state of Tennessee.50
At 2:18 A.M., EST, on Wednesday, the networks
declared that Bush had won Florida after all, which now
made Bush the next president of the United States.51
Several newspapers around the country rushed out with
headlines declaring Bush the victor. Gore telephoned
Bush from Nashville to concede the election, and congratulated the Texas governor on his victory. But soon
after, as Gore was on his way by motorcade to make a
concession speech to his supporters, his aides learned
that Bush’s lead in Florida was dwindling fast.
At 3:30 A.M. EST, Gore telephoned Bush and in a
second, tense conversation he retracted his concession.
At 4:04 A.M. the networks reported that Florida had
swung back into the “undecided” column.52 The long
wait for a definitive result in Florida had begun.
By Wednesday, November 8, county elections supervisors in Florida began to recount the votes, as required
by state law in a close election. Meanwhile, large numbers of Republican and Democratic lawyers descended
on the Sunshine State. They were led by two former
American secretaries of state—James A. Baker for the
Bush campaign, and Warren Christopher for Gore. As
the recount proceeded, Bush’s initial lead of 1,700 votes
over Gore began to shrink.
There was immediate controversy over the form of
the ballot used in some precincts in Palm Beach County.
Democrats argued that the “butterfly” layout of the ballot—with the names of the presidential candidates on
both the left and right sides—was not only confusing
but also potentially illegal according to Florida law, and
that it caused hundreds of citizens who wished to vote
for Gore to punch the hole next to Buchanan’s name
instead. Buchanan himself agreed that many of the
votes that he had received in the county had been
intended for Gore. Republicans, however, pointed out
that the ballot had been designed and approved by a
Democratic Party official.
But the major controversy between the two parties
centered on a tiny piece of paper known as a “chad.” As
Americans soon learned, a chad was the bit of paper that
normally fell out when a ballot was punched by the voter
with a stylus. Sometimes, however, voters failed to punch
the ballot all the way through. A tiny dangling piece of
paper—a “hanging chad”—may remain and can fall back
to fill the hole in the card. Or a weak punch of the ballot
may leave only an indentation, known as a “dimpled
chad.” Voting machines read such ballots as not having
cast any vote. Democrats argued that they had lost a
substantial number of votes intended for Gore. They demanded a hand recount of the ballots in four largely
Democratic counties, in order to identify those votes.
On Saturday, November 11, election officials began a
slow hand count in some precincts in South Florida. That
same day, the Bush campaign filed suit in a federal district
court to try to block the manual recounts. They argued
that a manual recount is open to human error and subjective judgments that are not present in a machine count.
Two days later, however, the federal court ruled against
the Republicans. Bush now led by about 300 votes in the
unofficial tally; but, for the moment at least, the manual
recount would proceed. There was additional uncertainty
in both camps about the impact of absentee ballots from
overseas, many from military personnel, which were to be
counted by midnight Friday, November 17.
On Wednesday, November 15, the Florida secretary of
state, Katherine Harris, a Republican and co-chair of
The morning after: Headlines on four editions of the
Chicago Sun-Times on November 8, 2000, reflect
the confused result of the election.
AP/Wide World
Election 2000: A Case Study
349
THE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES, 2000
GORE: Under my plan all seniors will get prescription
drugs under Medicare. . . . Under the Medicare prescription
drug proposal I’m making, you go to your own doctor. Your
doctor chooses your prescription. . . . Then you go to your
own pharmacy. You fill the prescription and Medicare pays
half the cost. If you’re in a very poor family or high costs,
Medicare will pay all the costs. . . . Here is the contrast: 95
percent of all seniors would get no help whatsoever under
my opponent’s plan for the first four or five years.
BUSH: I guess my answer to that is the man is running on
Mediscare. It’s not what I think and it’s not my intentions
and not my plan. I want all seniors to have prescription
drugs in Medicare. We need to reform Medicare. This administration has failed to do it. . . . The system today has
meant a lot for a lot of seniors. . . . If you’re happy with
the system you can stay in it. . . . We need to have a modern system to help seniors and the idea of supporting a
federally controlled . . . government bureaucracy of being
a compassionate way for seniors . . . is not my vision. . . .
You’ve had your chance, vice president, you’ve been there
for eight years and nothing has been done. . . .
GORE: Under my plan I will put Medicare in an iron
clad lock box and prevent the money from being used for
anything other than Medicare. The governor has declined
to endorse that idea even though the Republican as well
as Democratic leaders in congress have endorsed it. I
would be interested to see if he would say this evening
he’ll put Medicaid in a lock box. One hundred billion
dollars comes out of Medicare just for the wealthy 1 percent in the tax cut. . . .
George W. Bush . . .
BUSH: This is a man who has great numbers. He talks
about numbers. I’m beginning to think not only did he
invent the Internet, but he invented the calculator. It’s fuzzy
math. It’s a scaring—trying to scare people in the voting
booth. Under my tax plan that he continues to criticize, I
set one-third. The federal government should take no more
than a third of anybody’s check. . . .
GORE: When I was a young man I volunteered for the
army. I served my country in Vietnam. . . . I served for
eight years in the House of Representatives and I served
on the intelligence committee, specialized in looking at
arms control. I served for eight years in the United States
Senate and served on the armed services committee. For
the last eight years I’ve served on the National Security
Council. . . .
BUSH: I think you have to look at how one has handled
responsibility in office. . . . It’s—the same in domestic
policy as well. Do you have the capacity to convince people
to follow? Whether one makes decisions based on sound
principles or whether or not you rely upon polls or focus
groups on how to decide what the course of action is. We
have too much polling and focus groups going on today. . . .
I’ve been the governor of a big state. I think one of the hallmarks of my relationship in Austin, Texas, is that I’ve had
the capacity to work with both Republicans and Democrats.
I think that’s an important part of leadership. . . .
—Excerpts from the first televised debate between
Al Gore and George W. Bush, October 3, 2000
. . . and Al Gore during their second televised debate,
October 11, 2000
AP/Wide World
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GORE: I think that we should move step-by-step toward
universal health coverage, but I am not in favor of government doing it all. We’ve spent 65 years now on the
development of a hybrid system, partly private, partly
public, and 85 percent of our people have health insurance, 15 percent don’t. That adds up to 44 million people.
That is a national outrage. We have got to get health coverage for those who do not have it and we’ve got to
improve the quality for those who do with a patient’s bill
of rights that’s real and that works. . . . We have got to
deal with long-term care. . . . Now, we have a big difference on this. And you need to know the record here.
Under Governor Bush, Texas has sunk to be 50th out of
50 in health care—in health insurance for their citizens.
BUSH: I’m absolutely opposed to a national health care
plan. I don’t want the federal government making decisions for consumers or for providers. I remember what
the administration tried to do in 1993. They tried to have
a national health care plan. And fortunately, it failed. I
trust people, I don’t trust the federal government. It’s
going to be one of the themes you hear tonight. I don’t
want the federal government making decisions on behalf
of everybody. There is an issue with the uninsured, there
sure is. And we have uninsured people in my state. Ours
is a big state, a fast-growing state. . . . But we’re providing health care for our people. . . . They’ve been talking
about it in Washington, D.C. The number of uninsured
has now gone up for the past seven years. . . . So health
care needs to be affordable and available. We have to
trust people to make decisions with their lives. . . .
MODERATOR: Vice President Gore, is the governor
right when he says that you’re proposing the largest federal spending in years?
GORE: Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I’m so glad that
I have the chance to knock that down. Look, the problem
is that under Governor Bush’s plan, $1.6 trillion tax cut,
mostly to the wealthy, under his own budget numbers, he
proposes spending more money for a tax cut just for the
the Bush campaign in Florida, made an announcement.
She said that once the absentee ballots were in, she would
certify the results of the presidential race on Saturday,
November 18, without including any additional votes
from the hand recounts because, she maintained, those
tallies would arrive too late under Florida law.
That night, Gore went on national television and
proposed that the two candidates agree in advance to
accept as final the results of manual recounts in selected
Florida counties, or in all 67 of the state’s counties if
Bush preferred, plus the absentee ballots. He also urged
that the two rival presidential candidates meet “to
wealthiest 1 percent than all the new money he budgets for
education, health care, and national defense combined. . . .
BUSH: This [Gore] is a big spender. . . . It’s part of his
record. We just have a different philosophy. Let me talk
about tax relief. If you pay taxes, you ought to get tax
relief. . . . I think if you’re going to have tax relief, everybody ought to get it. And therefore, wealthy people are
going to get it. But the top 1 percent will end up paying
one-third of the taxes in America and they get one-fifth of
the benefits.
MODERATOR: Governor. . . . What do you say specifically to what the vice president said tonight, he said it
many, many times, that your tax cut benefits the top 1
percent of the wealthiest Americans, and you’ve heard
what he said.
BUSH: Of course it does. If you pay taxes, you are
going to get a benefit. People who pay taxes will get
tax relief. . . .
GORE: Look, this isn’t about Governor Bush, it’s not
about me. It is about you. . . . If you want somebody
who believes that we were better off eight years ago than
we are now and that we ought to go back to the kind of
policies that we had back then, emphasizing tax cuts
mainly for the wealthy, here is your man. If you want
somebody who will fight for you and who will fight to
have middle-class tax cuts, then I am your man. I want
to be. Now, I doubt anybody here makes more than
$330,000 a year. I won’t ask you, but if you do, you’re in
the top 1 percent. . . . But if everyone here in this audience was . . . in the middle of the middle-class, then the
tax cuts for every single one of you all added up would
be less than the tax cut his plan would give to just one
member of that top wealthiest 1 percent. Now you judge
for yourselves whether or not that’s fair. . . .
—Excerpts from the third televised debate between
Al Gore and George W. Bush, October 17, 2000
improve the tone of our dialogue in America.” 53 Bush
quickly rejected the offer, saying that the disputed presidential election should be decided on the basis of law,
“not the result of deals.”54
On Thursday, November 16, the Republicans lost
their bid to halt the manual recount of the vote. The
Florida Supreme Court ruled that the hand counting
could continue; but the court left open the question of
whether the results of those hand counts would have to
be included in the final statewide vote tally.
On Friday, November 17, the Florida Supreme
Court ordered Secretary of State Harris not to certify
Election 2000: A Case Study
351
The controversial ballot in Palm Beach County,
Florida. Democrats argued that because of its
design, some Gore supporters mistakenly voted
for Pat Buchanan.
AP/Wide World
the election results until the Court could hear arguments from both sides on Monday, November 20. On
Saturday, November 18, after the overseas ballots had
been counted, Bush had a 930-vote lead statewide. Palm
Beach and Broward Counties continued their manual
counts; and Miami-Dade County decided that it would
begin its hand count on Monday.
On November 20, Gore’s attorneys, led by David
Boies, a prominent trial lawyer, urged the Florida
Supreme Court to allow recounts to proceed and to
require Katherine Harris to include the results of
the recounts in the final state tally. Bush’s lawyers
argued that the deadline for including the recounts
had passed and that it was unfair to recount votes only
in selected Democratic counties.
Shortly before 10 P.M. on November 21, the court
announced its unanimous decision: It allowed the recounts to continue for 5 days and ordered Harris to in-
Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris,
the state co-chairman of George W. Bush’s
presidential campaign, found herself in the
eye of the post-election political hurricane.
AP/Wide World
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clude the results when she certified the election. Rejecting
the Republican argument that recounts by hand were
unreliable, the court declared: “Although error cannot be
completely eliminated in any tabulation of the ballots, our
society has not yet gone so far as to place blind faith in
machines. In almost all endeavors, including elections,
humans routinely correct the errors of machines.”
The very next day, however, the Gore camp was
dealt an unexpected setback when, as Republican
demonstrators chanted noisily outside, election officials
in Miami-Dade County stopped their hand recount,
declaring that it could not be completed by the deadline
set by the court. At the same time, Bush’s lawyers
appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the ruling of the Florida high court. On November 24, the U.S.
Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.
As the hand recounts continued in Broward and
Palm Beach Counties, Gore’s lawyers made it clear that
With members of the news media watching
through the window, Palm Beach County’s
election officials conduct a hand recount of the
paper ballots.
AP/Wide World
the vice president would contest the election results in
Florida, once they were officially certified. Gore’s supporters argued that a recount in Miami-Dade alone,
where almost 700,000 people had voted, might—had it
not been halted—have provided Gore the margin of victory in the state.
At 7:30 P.M. EST on Sunday night, November 26, the
Florida secretary of state, Katherine Harris, officially
certified the election results, which showed Bush now
in the lead over Gore by 537 votes out of nearly 6 million votes cast. However, Harris rejected the partial tally
submitted by weary Palm Beach election officials, who
had been unable to complete their hand recount by the
5 P.M. deadline. The television networks broke into their
regular programming to cover Harris’s announcement
in the state capitol in Tallahassee. “I hereby declare
Governor George W. Bush the winner of Florida’s 25
electoral votes,” she said to the cheers of Bush supporters gathered outside.
Two hours later, at 9:30 P.M., flanked by two American
flags in the Texas state capitol in Austin, Bush appeared
on national television to declare he was “honored and
humbled to have won the state of Florida, which gives us
the needed electoral votes to win the election.” He was, he
said, ready “to serve as America’s next president.” If Gore
moved forward with a legal contest to the outcome in
Florida, Bush added, “it would not be the best route for
America.” He did not offer to withdraw his own appeal to
the U.S. Supreme Court.
On Monday, November 27, Gore’s attorneys filed a
lawsuit in Tallahassee, the Florida state capital, contesting the results in Miami-Dade, where the recount had
been halted, in Palm Beach, where the recount was
rejected, and in tiny Nassau county in northern Florida,
where there had been confusion in the vote count. That
night, with millions of Americans back home after the
long Thanksgiving weekend, Gore addressed the voters
on television with a backdrop of even more American
flags than Bush had displayed. In a democracy, Gore
said, every vote should be counted. “That is all we have
asked since Election Day—a complete count of all the
votes cast in Florida. . . .We haven’t had that yet.”
The political framework for the struggle was clear:
Bush had all but declared himself the next president of
the United States. Florida, where his brother Jeb was
governor, had officially put him over the top. Gore was
saying, in effect, not so fast—there are still votes to be
counted. Since Gore led by more than 300,000 votes in
the national popular vote, the vice president felt he had
the moral authority to continue the fight. But the clock
was ticking; December 12 was the deadline for Florida
to designate the electors who would meet to vote for
president and vice president on December 18, as other
electors would do in state capitals throughout the country. And opinion polls showed that many members of
the American public wanted the election settled.
On December 4, the U.S. Supreme Court—avoiding
any definitive ruling in the presidential election dispute—
sent the recount case back to the Florida Supreme Court,
asking that court to clarify the basis of its November
21 decision that had allowed the hand recounts to continue. That same afternoon, a state court in Tallahassee
emphatically rejected Gore’s plea to order the recounts
resumed. Gore’s lawyers immediately appealed to the
Florida Supreme Court.
Friday, December 8, was a day of high drama in
Florida. First, two state judges ruled against Gore supporters in Seminole and Martin counties who sought
to have absentee ballots disqualified because Republican party workers had filled in missing data on ballot
applications. But less than two hours later, the Florida
Supreme Court handed down its ruling on Gore’s recount
appeal. It held for the Vice President, ordering recounts
of “undervotes”—ballots on which machines had not registered a vote—in all 67 Florida counties. The Court also
restored certain disputed votes to Gore, reducing Bush’s
lead to 154 votes statewide. The Bush lawyers immediately appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Election 2000: A Case Study
353
TABLE 11-12
How Groups Voted in 2000
Gore
Bush
Nader
All (100%)
48%
48%
Men (48%)
42%
53%
Women (52%)
54%
43%
Whites (82%)
42%
54%
Blacks (10%)
90%
8%
Hispanics (4%)
67%
31%
Asian (2%)
54%
41%
Married (65%)
44%
53%
Unmarried (35%)
57%
38%
Didn’t complete high school (5%)
59%
39%
High school graduate (21%)
48%
49%
Some college (32%)
45%
51%
College graduate (24%)
45%
51%
Postgraduate (18%)
52%
44%
Age
18–29 (17%)
48%
46%
30–44 (33%)
48%
49%
45–59 (28%)
48%
49%
60 and up (23%)
51%
47%
Family income:
Less than $15,000 (7%)
57%
37%
$15,000–29,999 (16%)
54%
41%
$30,000–49,999 (24%)
49%
48%
$50,000 or over (53%)
45%
52%
White Protestants (47%)
34%
63%
Catholics (26%)
49%
47%
Jews (4%)
79%
19%
Family financial situation compared with 1996:
Better (50%)
61%
36%
Worse (11%)
35%
60%
About the same (38%)
33%
63%
Democrats (39%)
86%
11%
Republicans (35%)
8%
91%
Independents (27%)
45%
47%
Liberals (20%)
80%
13%
Moderates (50%)
52%
44%
Conservatives (29%)
17%
81%
1996 votes:
Clinton (46%)
82%
15%
Dole (31%)
7%
91%
Perot (6%)
27%
64%
First-time voters (9%)
52%
43%
Union households (26%)
59%
37%
2%
3%
2%
3%
1%
2%
4%
2%
4%
1%
1%
3%
3%
3%
5%
2%
2%
2%
4%
3%
2%
2%
2%
2%
1%
2%
3%
4%
2%
1%
6%
6%
2%
1%
2%
1%
7%
4%
3%
SOURCE: New York Times, November 12, 2000, section 4, p. 4.
Less than 24 hours later, on Saturday afternoon,
another thunderbolt: by a 5–4 vote, a split U.S. Supreme
Court issued a stay that stopped the recount in Florida
that was already underway. On Monday, December 11,
the Court heard arguments from both sides.
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Just before 10 P.M. December 12, on a freezing night
in Washington, a rancorous, bitterly divided United
States Supreme Court handed down its unsigned decision in the historic case of Bush v. Gore. By a vote of 5–4,
the Court reversed the Florida high court, holding that
because there were no uniform standards for inspecting
ballots in a statewide recount, it could not be done without violating the constitutional requirements “of equal
protection and due process” of law “to protect the fundamental right of each voter” in Florida.
In a stinging dissent, Justices John Paul Stevens,
Ruth Bador Ginsburg, and Stephen G. Breyer warned:
“Although we may never know with complete certainty
the identity of the winner of this year’s presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the
nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian
of the rule of law.”
But the Supreme Court majority, by ruling for
George W. Bush, had settled the election. The next night,
Vice President Al Gore conceded in a televised address to
the nation. An hour later, President-elect Bush went on
television with a call for national reconciliation. He
hoped the voters would “move beyond the bitterness and
partisanship of the recent past.” He said he was thankful
that Americans were able “to resolve our electoral differences in a peaceful way.” And he promised to work for all
Americans, “whether you voted for me or not.”
Vice President Gore had sounded a similar theme,
calling on the voters, especially his own supporters, “to
unite behind our next president.” He added: “Let there
be no doubt, while I strongly disagree with the court’s
decision, I accept it.” At last, the historic election of
2000 was over.
Despite the long, divisive post-election struggle, several noteworthy features of the voting patterns of 2000
were clear:
1. More than 105.3 million voters went to the polls.
The number of people who voted was up by about
9 million from the presidential election of 1996;
and the percentage of the voting age population
who voted—approximately 51 percent—was about
2.2 percentage points higher than the 48.8 percent
who voted in 1996. The overall gain in the turnout
was only moderate; but in some of the states that
were closely contested—including Florida and
Michigan—voter turnout increased sharply.
2. George W. Bush’s share of the total popular vote
was 47.9 percent. He received 539,947 fewer popular votes than Gore; and Bush thus became the
third American president since the Civil War to
win the presidency while losing the popular vote.
The other two were Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876
and Benjamin Harrison in 1888.
3. Ralph Nader and the Green Party polled 2,831,066
votes. Nader’s 2.7 percent of the total vote was far
short of the 5 percent he needed for the Green
Party to qualify for federal campaign matching
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
funds in 2004. But in Florida and New Hampshire,
states with 29 electoral votes that went to Bush,
Nader’s vote total was far larger than the margin
by which Gore lost these states.
Pat Buchanan made a weak showing. He received
447,798 votes (0.4 percent) on the Reform Party
ticket—an enormous drop from the vote the Reform
Party received in 1996 when Ross Perot headed the
party’s ticket (8.2 million votes).
One of the most striking features of the 2000 election was the continuation of the “gender gap”—the
tendency of women and men to vote differently in
the presidential race. Among men, Bush led Gore
53 to 42 percent. Women favored Gore over Bush
54 percent to 43 percent. (See Table 11-12.)
Voters’ evaluations of their own economic circumstances were strongly reflected in the returns. Half
of the voters reported that their family’s financial
situation was better in 2000 than it had been in
1996. Among that large group of voters, Gore led
Bush by 61 to 36 percent. Among voters who said
that their family’s situation was worse or was the
same in 2000, however, Bush polled 60 percent or
more of the vote. (See Table 11-12.)
There was a pronounced sectional pattern in the
voting returns. Gore ran well ahead of Bush in
nearly all of the Northeast, and led by somewhat
smaller margins in most areas along the West
Coast. Except in Florida, Bush ran well ahead of
Gore throughout the South; and Bush also had a
substantial lead in the Plains States and in most of
the Rocky Mountain States. In the Midwest, the
vote totals of the two candidates were very close.
Gore ran well among some traditionally Democratic
groups. Among members of union households,
Gore led by 59 to 37 percent. (Bush polled more
votes from union households than Dole received in
1996, however.) Exit polls also showed that Gore
did exceptionally well among two groups that were
heavily Democratic throughout the 1980s and the
1990s. African Americans voted 90 percent for
Gore, and 79 percent of Jewish voters cast their
ballots for him. (See Table 11-12.)
Hispanic Americans, who voted 73 percent to
20 percent for Clinton over Dole in 1996, were
still in the Democratic column in 2000—but by
a smaller margin. Hispanic Americans gave 67
percent of their votes to Gore and 31 percent to
Bush. In Florida, however, which turned out to
be the crucial state, many Cuban Americans
were strong supporters of Bush—especially in
Miami-Dade County.
Former supporters of Ross Perot provided a vitally
important element of Bush’s electoral strength. More
than 6 million persons who had voted for Perot in
1996 voted again in 2000. Among those former
Perot voters, Bush led Gore by 64 to 27 percent. In
other words, some 4 million former Perot support-
11.
12.
13.
14.
ers cast their ballots for Bush, compared with less
than 2 million who voted for Gore.
The 11 contests for governor in 2000 left the Democrats with a net gain of one governorship. But
there were still 29 Republican governors, compared
with 19 Democratic governors. Two governors were
independents.
In the battle for control of the House of Representatives, the Republicans repulsed a major Democratic
effort to win control of the House. Democrats made
a net gain of just one or two House seats, leaving the
Republicans with a narrow majority of about 221 to
212, pending some final vote recounts. In addition,
two independents were elected to the House.55
In the contests for the U.S. Senate, the Democrats
made a net gain of four Senate seats, with the result that the chamber was evenly divided, with 50
Republicans and 50 Democrats. This close balance
promised another spirited battle for control of the
Senate in the midterm elections of 2002. In 2002, it
appeared that the Democrats would have 14 seats
to defend and the Republicans would have 20.
Overall, the elections of 2000 left the United States
with an exceptionally close balance of power between Democrats and Republicans. The stage was
set for a continuation of the struggle for ascendancy
between the two parties. And that battle was sure to
be intensified when the states began to draw new
congressional district boundary lines for the House
of Representatives in 2001. At the same time, the
nation would also be watching closely to see whether
the new president and the two major parties could
govern effectively—in the wake of the bitter battle,
the lawsuits, and the harsh words exchanged between the Bush and Gore camps in the extraordinary
post-election fight for Florida’s 25 electoral votes.
Although the election was finally over, many larger
questions remained. Until November 7, 2000, very few
people had realized the horse-and-buggy nature of the
voting process in America—or the great variation in the
way that elections have been run in the nation’s 3000
counties in the 50 states. Some areas used machines, others ballots that were punched or marked by hand. The
reason for this patchwork quilt of voting systems was
money: most counties had small budgets and spent little
on election equipment.
Even before the fight over Florida had ended, there
were calls for reform, both in and out of Congress.
Legislation was introduced in the Senate to provide
matching grants to the states as an incentive to adopt
more modern voting procedures. Some experts urged
that touch-screen machines, like those used in ATMs, be
used for voting. Under the federal system, however, it
might be difficult to achieve a uniform method of voting,
since the states control the election machinery.
The remarkably close election reminded Americans
that the winner of the popular vote may not win in the
Election 2000: A Case Study
355
electoral college. Although there were calls to abolish the
electoral college, some observers warned that direct election of the president might, in a close election, lead to
even more demands for recounts in several states.
In the 2000 election, the legal battles over the vote in
Florida also illustrated just how complex the electoral
system is, with power divided and shared among the
states and the federal government. The battle for Florida
involved a complicated mix of state and federal statutes
and provisions of the U.S. Constitution, all coming into
play, as well as conflicts between the state courts and
the legislature, and the state and federal courts. Perhaps
the basic lesson of the 2000 election was this: when the
electorate is closely divided, there may be enormous
difficulties—and enormous pressures—within the political system to determine who won.
THE ELECTORAL SYSTEM
The act of choice performed by the American voter on
Election Day takes place within a legal and structural
framework that strongly influences the result. The electoral system in the United States is not neutral—it
affects the dynamics of voting all along the way. Before
voters can step into the voting booths, they must meet a
number of legal requirements. The candidates whose
names appear on the ballot must have qualified under
state law. The form of the ballot may influence voters’
decisions—if they are allowed to make a single mark or
pull a single lever, for example, they are more likely to
vote a straight party ticket than if they must make several marks or pull many levers to vote that way. How
their votes count in a presidential election is controlled
by custom, state law, and the Constitution, for all three
affect the workings of the electoral college. In short, the
structure, details, and workings of the electoral system
affect the people’s choice.
Suffrage
The Constitution provides for popular election of members of the House of Representatives, a provision
extended to the election of senators by the Seventeenth
Amendment, ratified in 1913. In electing a president,
the voters in each state actually choose electors, who
meet in December of the election year and cast their ballots for a chief executive. (See the discussion about the
electoral college later in this chapter.)
Voting is a basic right provided for by the Constitution. Under the Fourteenth Amendment, it is one of
the privileges and immunities of national citizenship
that the states may not abridge and that Congress has
the power to protect by federal legislation. For example,
in 1970 Congress limited state residence requirements
for voting in presidential elections. The states, however,
set many requirements for voting. State laws in part govern the machinery of choice—residence and other voting
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ELECTIONS
requirements, registration, primaries, and the form of
the ballot. And state laws regulate political parties.
Until the age of Andrew Jackson, voting was generally restricted to men who owned property and paid
taxes. Since then, suffrage has gradually been broadened. Most states lifted property requirements in the
early 19th century. In 1869 Wyoming became the first
state to enact women’s suffrage, and three other western states did so in the 1890s. In 1917 the suffragettes
began marching in front of the White House; they were
arrested and jailed. In 1919 Congress passed the
Nineteenth Amendment, making it unconstitutional to
deny any citizen the right to vote on account of sex. The
amendment was ratified by the states in time for
women to vote in the presidential election of 1920.
The long struggle of African Americans for the right
to vote is described in Chapter 5. As we have seen, even
though the Fifteenth Amendment specifically gave
black citizens the right to vote, it was circumvented
when the South regained political control of its state
governments following Reconstruction. Poll taxes, allwhite primaries, phony literacy tests, intimidation, and
violence were all effective in disenfranchising blacks
in the South. In 1964 the Twenty-fourth Amendment
eliminated the last vestiges of the poll tax in federal
elections.* But blacks still faced many of the other barriers to voting; only 44 percent of voting-age black citizens in the South voted in the 1964 presidential
election. The Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was
extended in 1970, 1975, and in 1982 to the year 2007,
sought to throw the mantle of federal protection around
these voters. It was followed by a dramatic increase in
blacks voting in the South.
Residence Requirements
When Congress extended
the Voting Rights Act in 1970, it included a provision
permitting voters in every state to vote in presidential
elections after living in the state for 30 days. This uniform federal standard was designed to override state
residence requirements, some of which had prevented
millions of persons from voting for president. The
Voting Rights Act also required states to permit absentee registration and voting. Subsequently, the Supreme
Court ruled that states may not require residence of
more than 30 days to vote in federal, state, and local
elections,62 although in 1973 the Court modified this
standard to permit a state residency requirement of 50
days, at least in state and local elections.63 But neither
case changed the 30-day maximum residence requirements for voting in presidential elections.
*Only five southern states still imposed a poll tax as a requirement for
voting in federal elections when the Twenty-fourth Amendment went
into effect on January 23, 1964. Under the Voting Rights Act of 1965,
the U.S. attorney general filed lawsuits against four of the 27 states still
imposing poll taxes in state and local elections. In 1966 the U.S.
Supreme Court ruled in Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections (383
U.S. 633) that any state poll tax violated the Fourteenth Amendment.
The decision outlawed the use of poll taxes at any level of election.