To a degree unique among democracies, the United States has always placed responsibility for running national elections in the hands of county, city, and town officials. ""The Way We Vote"" explores the causes and consequences of America's localized voting system, explaining its historical development and its impact on American popular sovereignty and democratic equality. The book shows that local electoral variation has endured through dramatic changes in American political and constitutional structure, and that such variation is the product of a clear, repeated developmental pattern, not simple neglect or public ignorance. Legal materials, statutes and congressional debates, state constitutional-convention proceedings, and the records of contested congressional elections illuminate a long record of federal and state intervention in American electoral mechanics. Lawmakers have always understood that a certain level of disorder characterizes U.S. national elections, and have responded by exercising their authority over suffrage practices - but only in limited ways, effectively helping to construct our triply governed electoral system.
- ISBN10 6612297069
- ISBN13 9786612297069
- Publish Date 17 July 2009 (first published 1 July 2009)
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 27 September 2011
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Vanderbilt University Press (TN)
- Format eBook
- Pages 240
- Language English