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A Theme of Equality in Campaigns and Elections
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 April 2005
Extract
Elections are the chief mechanisms of popular consent and political accountability indemocracy. As recent history attests: “elections in the democratic context can havesignificant implications for the makeup of a nation's ruling circle and the character of itspolicies” (Ginsberg 1982, viii). While American elections are undeniably consequential, theyfail on the democratic standard of equality. The American electorate is class biased—andmore so than in other advanced democracies. Research for more than 50 years has shown thatlarge numbers of Americans don't vote and that voters and nonvoters are drawn from differentincome and educational strata (Leighley and Nagler 1992). The burning issue of Americanelections is how to make the electorate more representative of the population as a whole.Courses on American elections, however, devote little time to turn-out and still less on howto mobilize non-voters. Instead, the lion's share of the typical syllabus is devoted to thepresidential campaign process. The emphasis on “hoopla” (Patterson 1980) cannot help butfeed student conceptualization of politics as a game, rather than an essential socialenterprise. If our goal as teachers of political science is to bring students into the worldof constructive democratic citizenship, then we must discuss with our students what is atstake in American elections.
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