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Sunday, December 22, 2019

Voting rights in the United States

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
U.S. presidential election popular vote totals as a percentage of the total U.S. population. Note the surge in 1828 (extension of suffrage to non-property-owning white men), the drop from 1890–1910 (when Southern states disenfranchised most African Americans and many poor whites), and another surge in 1920 (extension of suffrage to women).
 
It issue of voting rights in the United States, specifically the enfranchisement and disenfranchisement of different groups, has been contested throughout United States history. 

Eligibility to vote in the United States is established both through the United States Constitution and by state law. Several constitutional amendments (the Fifteenth, Nineteenth, and Twenty-sixth specifically) require that voting rights of U.S. citizens cannot be abridged on account of race, color, previous condition of servitude, sex, or age for those above 18; the constitution as originally written did not establish any such rights during 1787–1870, except that if a state permitted a person to vote for the "most numerous branch" of its state legislature, it was required to permit that person to vote in elections for members of the United States House of Representatives. In the absence of a specific federal law or constitutional provision, each state is given considerable discretion to establish qualifications for suffrage and candidacy within its own respective jurisdiction; in addition, states and lower level jurisdictions establish election systems, such as at-large or single member district elections for county councils or school boards. Beyond qualifications for suffrage, rules and regulations concerning voting (such as the poll tax) have been contested since the advent of Jim Crow laws and related provisions that indirectly disenfranchised racial minorities.

A historic turning point arrived when the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren ruled in 1964 that both houses of all state legislatures had to be based on election districts that were relatively equal in population size, under the "one man, one vote" principle. The Warren Court's decisions on two previous landmark cases Baker v. Carr (1962) and Wesberry v. Sanders (1964) also played a fundamental role in establishing the nationwide "one man, one vote" electoral system. Since the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Twenty-fourth Amendment, and related laws, voting rights have been legally considered an issue related to election systems. In 1972, the Burger Court ruled that state legislatures had to redistrict every ten years based on census results; at that point, many had not redistricted for decades, often leading to a rural bias.

In other cases, particularly for county or municipal elections, at-large voting has been repeatedly challenged when found to dilute the voting power of significant minorities in violation of the Voting Rights Act. In the early 20th century, numerous cities established small commission forms of government in the belief that "better government" could result from the suppression of ward politics. Commissioners were elected by the majority of voters, excluding candidates who could not afford large campaigns or who appealed to a minority. Generally the solution to such violations has been to adopt single-member districts (SMDs), but alternative election systems, such as limited voting or cumulative voting, have also been used since the late 20th century to correct for dilution of voting power and enable minorities to elect candidates of their choice.

The District of Columbia and five major territories of the United States have one non-voting member each (in the U.S. House of Representatives) and no representation in the U.S. Senate. People in the U.S. territories cannot vote for president of the United States. People in the District of Columbia can vote for the president because of the Twenty-third Amendment. 

Background

In the 17th-century Thirteen Colonies, suffrage was often restricted by property qualifications or with a religious test. In 1660, Plymouth Colony restricted suffrage with a specified property qualification, and in 1671, Plymouth Colony restricted suffrage further to only freemen "orthodox in the fundamentals of religion". Connecticut in mid-century also restricted suffrage with a specified property qualification and a religious test, and in Pennsylvania, the Province of Carolina, and the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations voting rights were restricted to Christians only. Under the Duke's Laws in colonial New York, suffrage did not require a religious test but was restricted to landholders. In Virginia, all white freemen were allowed to vote until suffrage was restricted temporarily to householders from 1655 to 1656, to freeholders from 1670 to 1676, and following the death of Nathaniel Bacon in 1676, to freeholders permanently. Quakers were not permitted to vote in Plymouth Colony or in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and along with Baptists, were not permitted to vote in several other colonies as well, and Catholics were disenfranchised following the Glorious Revolution (1688–1689) in Maryland, New York, Rhode Island, Carolina, and Virginia.

In the 18th-century Thirteen Colonies, suffrage was restricted to white males with the following property qualifications:
The United States Constitution did not originally define who was eligible to vote, allowing each state to determine who was eligible. In the early history of the U.S., some states allowed only white male adult property owners to vote, while others either did not specify race, or specifically protected the rights of men of any race to vote. Freed slaves could vote in four states. Women were largely prohibited from voting, as were men without property. Women could vote in New Jersey until 1807 (provided they could meet the property requirement) and in some local jurisdictions in other northern states. Non-white Americans could also vote in these jurisdictions, provided they could meet the property requirement. 

Beginning around 1790, individual states began to reassess property ownership as a qualification for enfranchisement in favor of gender and race, with most states disenfranchising women and non-white men. By 1856, white men were allowed to vote in all states regardless of property ownership, although requirements for paying tax remained in five states. On the other hand, several states, including Pennsylvania and New Jersey stripped the free black males of the right to vote in the same period. 

Four of the fifteen post-Civil War constitutional amendments were ratified to extend voting rights to different groups of citizens. These extensions state that voting rights cannot be denied or abridged based on the following:
  • "Race, color, or previous condition of servitude" (Fifteenth Amendment, 1870)
  • "On account of sex" (Nineteenth Amendment, 1920)
  • "By reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax" for federal elections (Twenty-fourth Amendment, 1964)[Note 1]
  • "Who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of age" (Twenty-sixth Amendment, 1971)
Following the Reconstruction Era until the culmination of the Civil Rights Movement, Jim Crow laws such as literacy tests, poll taxes, and religious tests were some of the state and local laws used in various parts of the United States to deny immigrants (including legal ones and newly naturalized citizens), non-white citizens, Native Americans, and any other locally "undesirable" groups from exercising voting rights granted under the constitution. Because of such state and local discriminatory practices, over time, the federal role in elections has increased, through amendments to the Constitution and enacted legislation. These reforms in the 19th and 20th centuries extended the franchise to non-whites, those who do not own property, women, and those 18–21 years old.

Since the "right to vote" is not explicitly stated in the U.S. Constitution except in the above referenced amendments, and only in reference to the fact that the franchise cannot be denied or abridged based solely on the aforementioned qualifications, the "right to vote" is perhaps better understood, in layman's terms, as only prohibiting certain forms of legal discrimination in establishing qualifications for suffrage. States may deny the "right to vote" for other reasons. For example, many states require eligible citizens to register to vote a set number of days prior to the election in order to vote. More controversial restrictions include those laws that prohibit convicted felons from voting, even those who have served their sentences. Another example, seen in Bush v. Gore, are disputes as to what rules should apply in counting or recounting ballots.

A state may choose to fill an office by means other than an election. For example, upon death or resignation of a legislator, the state may allow the affiliated political party to choose a replacement to hold office until the next scheduled election. Such an appointment is often affirmed by the governor.

The Constitution, in Article VI, clause (paragraph) 3, does state that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States". 

Milestones of national franchise changes

  • 1789: The Constitution grants the states the power to set voting requirements. Generally, states limited this right to property-owning or tax-paying white males (about 6% of the population).
  • 1790: The Naturalization Act of 1790 allows white men born outside of the United States to become citizens with the right to vote.
  • 1792–1838: Free black males lose the right to vote in several Northern states including in Pennsylvania and in New Jersey.
  • 1792–1856: Abolition of property qualifications for white men, from 1792 (Kentucky) to 1856 (North Carolina) during the periods of Jeffersonian and Jacksonian democracy. However, tax-paying qualifications remained in five states in 1860—Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Delaware and North Carolina. They survived in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island until the 20th century.
  • 1868: Citizenship is guaranteed to all persons born or naturalized in the United States by the Fourteenth Amendment, setting the stage for future expansions to voting rights.
  • 1869–1920: Some states allow women to vote. Wyoming was the first state to give women voting rights in 1869.
  • 1870: Non-white men and freed male slaves are guaranteed the right to vote by the Fifteenth Amendment. Disenfranchisement after the Reconstruction Era began soon after. Southern states suppressed the voting rights of black and poor white voters through Jim Crow Laws. During this period, the Supreme Court generally upheld state efforts to discriminate against racial minorities; only later in the 20th century were these laws ruled unconstitutional. Black males in the Northern states could vote, but the majority of African Americans lived in the South.
  • 1887: Citizenship is granted to Native Americans who are willing to disassociate themselves from their tribe by the Dawes Act, making the men technically eligible to vote.
  • 1913: Direct election of Senators, established by the Seventeenth Amendment, gave voters rather than state legislatures the right to elect senators.
  • 1920: Women are guaranteed the right to vote in all US States by the Nineteenth Amendment. In practice, the same restrictions that hindered the ability of poor or non-white men to vote now also applied to poor or non-white women.
  • 1924: All Native Americans are granted citizenship and the right to vote, regardless of tribal affiliation. By this point, approximately two thirds of Native Americans were already citizens.
  • 1943: Chinese immigrants given the right to citizenship and the right to vote by the Magnuson Act.
  • 1961: Residents of Washington, D.C. are granted the right to vote in U.S. Presidential Elections by the Twenty-third Amendment.
  • 1962-1964: A historic turning point arrived after the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren made a series of landmark decisions which helped establish the nationwide "one man, one vote" electoral system in the United States.
  • 1964: Poll Tax payment prohibited from being used as a condition for voting in federal elections by the Twenty-fourth Amendment.
  • 1965: Protection of voter registration and voting for racial minorities, later applied to language minorities, is established by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This has also been applied to correcting discriminatory election systems and districting.
  • 1966: Tax payment and wealth requirements for voting in state elections are prohibited by the Supreme Court in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections.
  • 1971: Adults aged 18 through 21 are granted the right to vote by the Twenty-sixth Amendment. This was enacted in response to Vietnam War protests, which argued that soldiers who were old enough to fight for their country should be granted the right to vote.
  • 1986: United States Military and Uniformed Services, Merchant Marine, other citizens overseas, living on bases in the United States, abroad, or aboard ship are granted the right to vote by the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act.

Native American people

From 1778 to 1871, the government tried to resolve its relationship with the various native tribes by negotiating treaties. These treaties formed agreements between two sovereign nations, stating that Native American people were citizens of their tribe, living within the boundaries of the United States. The treaties were negotiated by the executive branch and ratified by the U.S. Senate. It said that native tribes would give up their rights to hunt and live on huge parcels of land that they had inhabited in exchange for trade goods, yearly cash annuity payments, and assurances that no further demands would be made on them. Most often, part of the land would be "reserved" exclusively for the tribe's use.

Throughout the 1800s, many native tribes gradually lost claim to the lands they had inhabited for centuries through the federal government's Indian Removal policy to relocate tribes from the Southeast and Northwest to west of the Mississippi River. European-American settlers continued to encroach on western lands. Only in 1879, in the Standing Bear trial, were American Indians recognized as persons in the eyes of the United States government. Judge Elmer Scipio Dundy of Nebraska declared that Indians were people within the meaning of the laws, and they had the rights associated with a writ of habeas corpus. However, Judge Dundy left unsettled the question as to whether Native Americans were guaranteed US citizenship.

Although Native Americans were born within the national boundaries of the United States, those on reservations were considered citizens of their own tribes, rather than of the United States. They were denied the right to vote because they were not considered citizens by law and were thus ineligible. Many Native Americans were told they would become citizens if they gave up their tribal affiliations in 1887 under the Dawes Act, which allocated communal lands to individual households and was intended to aid in the assimilation of Native Americans into majority culture. This still did not guarantee their right to vote. In 1924, the remaining Native Americans, estimated at about one-third, became United States citizens through the Indian Citizenship Act. Many western states, however, continued to restrict Native American ability to vote through property requirements, economic pressures, hiding the polls, and condoning of physical violence against those who voted. Since the late 20th century, they have been protected under provisions of the Voting Rights Act as a racial minority, and in some areas, language minority, gaining election materials in their native languages.

Religious test

In several British North American colonies, before and after the 1776 Declaration of Independence, Jews, Quakers and/or Catholics were excluded from the franchise and/or from running for elections.

The Delaware Constitution of 1776 stated that "Every person who shall be chosen a member of either house, or appointed to any office or place of trust, before taking his seat, or entering upon the execution of his office, shall ... also make and subscribe the following declaration, to wit: I, A B. do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed for evermore; and I do acknowledge the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration.". This was repealed by Article I, Section II. of the 1792 Constitution: "No religious test shall be required as a qualification to any office, or public trust, under this State". The 1778 Constitution of the State of South Carolina stated, "No person shall be eligible to sit in the house of representatives unless he be of the Protestant religion", the 1777 Constitution of the State of Georgia (art. VI) that "The representatives shall be chosen out of the residents in each county ... and they shall be of the Protestant religion".

With the growth in the number of Baptists in Virginia before the Revolution, who challenged the established Anglican Church, the issues of religious freedom became important to rising leaders such as James Madison. As a young lawyer, he defended Baptist preachers who were not licensed by (and were opposed by) the established state Anglican Church. He carried developing ideas about religious freedom to be incorporated into the constitutional convention of the United States.

In 1787, Article One of the United States Constitution stated that "the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature". More significantly, Article Six disavowed the religious test requirements of several states, saying: "[N]o religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

But, in Maryland, Jewish Americans were excluded from State office until the law requiring candidates to affirm a belief in an afterlife was repealed in 1828. 

Poor whites and free African Americans

At the time of ratification of the Constitution in the late 18th century, most states had property qualifications which restricted the franchise; the exact amount varied by state, but by some estimates, more than half of white men were disenfranchised. Several states granted suffrage to free men of color after the Revolution, including North Carolina. This fact was noted by Justice Benjamin Robbins Curtis' dissent in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), as he emphasized that blacks had been considered citizens at the time the Constitution was ratified:
Of this there can be no doubt. At the time of the ratification of the Articles of Confederation, all free native-born inhabitants of the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and North Carolina, though descended from African slaves, were not only citizens of those States, but such of them as had the other necessary qualifications possessed the franchise of electors, on equal terms with other citizens.
  • In the 1820s, New York State enlarged its franchise to white men by dropping the property qualification, but maintained it for free blacks.
  • The Supreme Court of North Carolina had upheld the ability of free African Americans to vote in that state. In 1835, because of fears of the role of free blacks after Nat Turner's Slave Rebellion of 1831, they were disenfranchised by decision of the North Carolina Constitutional Convention. At the same time, convention delegates relaxed religious and property qualifications for whites, thus expanding the franchise for them.
  • Alabama entered the union in 1819 with universal white suffrage provided in its constitution.
When the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868 after the Civil War, it granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction. In 1869, the Fifteenth Amendment prohibited the government from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude". The major effect of these amendments was to enfranchise African American men, the overwhelming majority of whom were freedmen in the South.

After the war, some Southern states passed "Black Codes", state laws to restrict the new freedoms of African Americans. They attempted to control their movement, assembly, working conditions and other civil rights. Some states also prohibited them from voting.

The Fifteenth Amendment, one of three ratified after the American Civil War to grant freedmen full rights of citizenship, prevented any state from denying the right to vote to any citizen based on race. This was primarily related to protecting the franchise of freedmen, but it also applied to non-white minorities, such as Mexican Americans in Texas. The state governments under Reconstruction adopted new state constitutions or amendments designed to protect the ability of freedmen to vote. The white resistance to black suffrage after the war regularly erupted into violence as white groups tried to protect their power. Particularly in the South, in the aftermath of the Civil War whites made efforts to suppress freedmen's voting. In the 1860s, secret vigilante groups such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) used violence and intimidation to keep freedmen in a controlled role and reestablish white supremacy. But, black freedmen registered and voted in high numbers, and many were elected to local offices through the 1880s.

In the mid-1870s, the insurgencies continued with a rise in more powerful white paramilitary groups, such as the White League, originating in Louisiana in 1874 after a disputed gubernatorial election; and the Red Shirts, originating in Mississippi in 1875 and developing numerous chapters in North and South Carolina; as well as other "White Line" rifle clubs. They operated openly, were more organized than the KKK, and directed their efforts at political goals: to disrupt Republican organizing, turn Republicans out of office, and intimidate or kill blacks to suppress black voting. They worked as "the military arm of the Democratic Party". For instance, estimates were that 150 blacks were killed in North Carolina before the 1876 elections. Economic tactics such as eviction from rental housing or termination of employment were also used to suppress the black vote. White Democrats regained power in state legislatures across the South by the late 1870s, and the federal government withdrew its troops as a result of a national compromise related to the presidency, officially ending Reconstruction.

African Americans were a majority in three Southern states following the Civil War, and represented over 40% of the population in four other states. While they did not elect a majority of African Americans to office in any state legislature during Reconstruction, whites still feared and resented the political power exercised by freedmen. After ousting the Republicans, whites worked to restore white supremacy. 

Although elections were often surrounded by violence, blacks continued to vote and gained many local offices in the late 19th century. In the late 19th century, a Populist-Republican coalition in several states gained governorships and some congressional seats in 1894. To prevent such a coalition from forming again and reduce election violence, the Democratic Party, dominant in all southern state legislatures, took action to disfranchise most blacks and many poor whites outright.

From 1890 to 1908, ten of the eleven former Confederate states completed political suppression and exclusion of these groups by ratifying new constitutions or amendments which incorporated provisions to make voter registration more difficult. These included such requirements as payment of poll taxes, complicated record keeping, complicated timing of registration and length of residency in relation to elections, with related record-keeping requirements; felony disenfranchisement focusing on crimes thought to be committed by African Americans, and a literacy test or comprehension test. 

This was defended openly, on the floor of the Senate, by South Carolina Senator and former Governor Benjamin Tillman:
In my State there were 135,000 negro voters, or negroes of voting age, and some 90,000 or 95,000 white voters. ... Now, I want to ask you, with a free vote and a fair count, how are you going to beat 135,000 by 95,000? How are you going to do it? You had set us an impossible task.

We did not disfranchise the negroes until 1895. Then we had a constitutional convention convened which took the matter up calmly, deliberately, and avowedly with the purpose of disfranchising as many of them as we could under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. We adopted the educational qualification as the only means left to us, and the negro is as contented and as prosperous and as well protected in South Carolina to-day as in any State of the Union south of the Potomac. He is not meddling with politics, for he found that the more he meddled with them the worse off he got. As to his "rights"—I will not discuss them now. We of the South have never recognized the right of the negro to govern white men, and we never will. ... I would to God the last one of them was in Africa and that none of them had ever been brought to our shores.
Prospective voters had to prove the ability to read and write the English language to white voter registrars, who in practice applied subjective requirements. Blacks were often denied the right to vote on this basis. Even well-educated blacks were often told they had "failed" such a test, if in fact, it had been administered. On the other hand, illiterate whites were sometimes allowed to vote through a "grandfather clause," which waived literacy requirements if one's grandfather had been a qualified voter before 1866, or had served as a soldier, or was from a foreign country. As most blacks had grandfathers who were slaves before 1866 and could not have fulfilled any of those conditions, they could not use the grandfather clause exemption. Selective enforcement of the poll tax was frequently also used to disqualify black and poor white voters. As a result of these measures, at the turn of the century voter rolls dropped markedly across the South. Most blacks and many poor whites were excluded from the political system for decades. Unable to vote, they were also excluded from juries or running for any office. 

In Alabama, for example, its 1901 constitution restricted the franchise for poor whites as well as blacks. It contained requirements for payment of cumulative poll taxes, completion of literacy tests, and increased residency at state, county and precinct levels, effectively disenfranchised tens of thousands of poor whites as well as most blacks. Historian J. Morgan Kousser found, "They disfranchised these whites as willingly as they deprived blacks of the vote." By 1941, more whites than blacks in total had been disenfranchised.

Legal challenges to disfranchisement

Although African Americans quickly began legal challenges to such provisions in the 19th century, it was years before any were successful before the U.S. Supreme Court. Booker T. Washington, better known for his public stance of trying to work within societal constraints of the period at Tuskegee University, secretly helped fund and arrange representation for numerous legal challenges to disfranchisement. He called upon wealthy Northern allies and philanthropists to raise funds for the cause. The Supreme Court's upholding of Mississippi's new constitution, in Williams v. Mississippi (1898), encouraged other states to follow the Mississippi plan of disfranchisement. African Americans brought other legal challenges, as in Giles v. Harris (1903) and Giles v. Teasley (1904), but the Supreme Court upheld Alabama constitutional provisions. In 1915 Oklahoma was the last state to append a grandfather clause to its literacy requirement due to Supreme Court cases.

From early in the 20th century, the newly established National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) took the lead in organizing or supporting legal challenges to segregation and disfranchisement. Gradually they planned the strategy of which cases to take forward. In Guinn v. United States (1915), the first case in which the NAACP filed a brief, the Supreme Court struck down the grandfather clause in Oklahoma and Maryland. Other states in which it was used had to retract their legislation as well. The challenge was successful.

But, nearly as rapidly as the Supreme Court determined a specific provision was unconstitutional, state legislatures developed new statutes to continue disenfranchisement. For instance, in Smith v. Allwright (1944), the Supreme Court struck down the use of state-sanctioned all-white primaries by the Democratic Party in the South. States developed new restrictions on black voting; Alabama passed a law giving county registrars more authority as to which questions they asked applicants in comprehension or literacy tests. The NAACP continued with steady progress in legal challenges to disenfranchisement and segregation.

In 1957, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 to implement the Fifteenth Amendment. It established the United States Civil Rights Commission; among its duties is to investigate voter discrimination.

As late as 1962, programs such as Operation Eagle Eye in Arizona attempted to stymie minority voting through literacy tests. The Twenty-fourth Amendment was ratified in 1964 to prohibit poll taxes as a condition of voter registration and voting in federal elections. Many states continued to use them in state elections as a means of reducing the number of voters.

The American Civil Rights Movement, through such events as the Selma to Montgomery marches and Freedom Summer in Mississippi, gained passage by the United States Congress of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which authorized federal oversight of voter registration and election practices and other enforcement of voting rights. Congress passed the legislation because it found "case by case litigation was inadequate to combat widespread and persistent discrimination in voting". Activism by African Americans helped secure an expanded and protected franchise that has benefited all Americans, including racial and language minorities.

The bill provided for federal oversight, if necessary, to ensure just voter registration and election procedures. The rate of African-American registration and voting in Southern states climbed dramatically and quickly, but it has taken years of federal oversight to work out the processes and overcome local resistance. In addition, it was not until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections (1966) that all state poll taxes (for state elections) were officially declared unconstitutional as violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This removed a burden on the poor.

Legal challenges have continued under the Voting Rights Act, primarily in areas of redistricting and election systems, for instance, challenging at-large election systems that effectively reduce the ability of minority groups to elect candidates of their choice. Such challenges have particularly occurred at the county and municipal level, including for school boards, where exclusion of minority groups and candidates at such levels has been persistent in some areas of the country. This reduces the ability of women and minorities to participate in the political system and gain entry-level experience. 

Women

A parallel, yet separate, movement was that for women's suffrage. Leaders of the suffrage movement included Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Alice Paul. In some ways this, too, could be said to have grown out of the American Civil War, as women had been strong leaders of the abolition movement. Middle- and upper-class women generally became more politically active in the northern tier during and after the war. 

In 1848, the Seneca Falls Convention, the first women's rights convention, was held in Seneca Falls, New York. Of the 300 present, 68 women and 32 men signed the Declaration of Sentiments which defined the women's rights movement. The first National Women's Rights Convention took place in 1850 in Worcester, Massachusetts, attracting more than 1,000 participants. This national convention was held yearly through 1860. 

When Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton formed the National Women Suffrage Association, their goal was to help women gain voting rights through reliance on the Constitution. Also, in 1869 Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell formed the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). However, AWSA focused on gaining voting rights for women through the amendment process. Although these two organization were fighting for the same cause, it was not until 1890 that they merged to form the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). After the merger of the two organizations, the (NAWSA) waged a state-by-state campaign to obtain voting rights for women.

Wyoming was the first state in which women were able to vote, although it was a condition of the transition to statehood. Utah was the second territory to allow women to vote, but the federal Edmunds–Tucker Act of 1887 repealed woman's suffrage in Utah. Colorado was the first established state to allow women to vote on the same basis as men. Some other states also extended the franchise to women before the Constitution was amended to this purpose.

During the 1910s Alice Paul, assisted by Lucy Burns and many others, organized such events and organizations as the 1913 Women's Suffrage Parade, the National Woman's Party, and the Silent Sentinels. At the culmination of the suffragists' requests and protests, ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment gave women the right to vote in time to participate in the Presidential election of 1920.

Another political movement that was largely driven by women in the same era was the anti-alcohol Temperance movement, which led to the Eighteenth Amendment and Prohibition.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., was created from a portion of the states of Maryland and Virginia in 1801. The Virginia portion was retroceded (returned) to Virginia upon request of the residents, by an Act of Congress in 1846 to protect slavery, and restore state and federal voting rights in that portion of Virginia. When Maryland delegated a portion of its land to Congress so it could be used as the Nation's capital, Congress did not continue Maryland Voting Laws. It canceled all state and federal elections starting with 1802. Local elections limped on in some neighborhoods, until 1871, when local elections were also forbidden by the U.S. Congress. The U.S. Congress is the National Legislature. Under Article I, Section 8, Clause 17, Congress has the sole authority to exercise "Exclusive Legislature in all cases whatsoever" over the nation's capital and over federal military bases. Active disfranchisement is typically a States Rights Legislative issue, where the removal of voting rights is permitted. At the national level, the federal government typically ignored voting rights issues, or affirmed that they were extended. 

Congress, when exercising "exclusive legislation" over U.S. Military Bases in the United States, and Washington, D.C., viewed its power as strong enough to remove all voting rights. All state and federal elections were canceled by Congress in D.C. and all of Maryland's voting Rights laws no longer applied to D.C. when Maryland gave up that land. Congress did not pass laws to establish local voting processes in the District of Columbia. This omission of law strategy to disfranchise is contained in the Congressional debates in Annals of Congress in 1800 and 1801.

In 1986, the US Congress voted to restore voting rights on U.S. Military bases for all state and federal elections.

D.C. citizens were granted the right to vote in Presidential elections in 1961 after ratification of the Twenty-third Amendment. The citizens and territory converted in 1801 were represented by John Chew Thomas from Maryland's 2nd, and William Craik from Maryland's 3rd Congressional Districts, which were redrawn and removed from the city. 

No full Congressional elections have been held since in D.C., a gap continuing since 1801. Congress created a non-voting substitute for a U.S. Congressman, a Delegate, between 1871–1875, but then abolished that post as well. Congress permitted restoration of local elections and home rule for the District on December 24, 1973. In 1971, Congress still opposed restoring the position of a full U.S. Congressman for Washington, D.C. That year it re-established the position of non-voting Delegate to the U.S. Congress.

Young people

Some states (shown in blue) allow 17-year-olds to vote in primaries/caucuses if their 18th birthday is before the general election.
 
A third voting rights movement was won in the 1960s to lower the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen. Activists noted that most of the young men who were being drafted to fight in the Vietnam War were too young to have any voice in the selection of the leaders who were sending them to fight. Some states had already lowered the voting age: notably Georgia, Kentucky, and Hawaii, had already permitted voting by persons younger than twenty-one.

The Twenty-sixth Amendment, ratified in 1971, prohibits federal and state laws which set a minimum voting age higher than 18 years. As of 2008, no state has opted for an earlier age, although some state governments have discussed it. California has, since the 1980s, allowed persons who are 17 to register to vote for an election where the election itself will occur on or after their 18th birthday, and several states including Indiana allow 17-year-olds to vote in a primary election provided they will be 18 by the general election. 

Prisoners

Prisoner voting rights are defined by individual states, and the laws are different from state to state. Some states allow only individuals on probation to vote. Others allow individuals on parole and probation. As of 2012, only Florida, Kentucky and Virginia continue to impose a lifelong denial of the right to vote to all citizens with a felony record, absent a restoration of rights granted by the Governor or state legislature. However, in Kentucky, a felon's rights can be restored after the completion of a restoration process to regain civil rights.

In 2007, Florida legislature restored voting rights to convicted felons who had served their sentences. In March 2011, however, Governor Rick Scott reversed the 2007 reforms. He signed legislation that permanently disenfranchises citizens with past felony convictions. After a referendum in 2018, however, Florida residents voted to restore voting rights to roughly 1.4 million felons who have completed their sentences.

In July 2005, Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack issued an executive order restoring the right to vote for all persons who have completed supervision. On October 31, 2005, Iowa's Supreme Court upheld mass reenfranchisement of convicted felons. Nine other states disenfranchise felons for various lengths of time following the completion of their probation or parole. 

Other than Maine and Vermont, all U.S. states prohibit felons from voting while they are in prison. In Puerto Rico, felons in prison are allowed to vote in elections.

Practices in the United States are in contrast to some European nations that allow prisoners to vote, while other European countries have restrictions on voting while serving a prison sentence, but not after release. Prisoners have been allowed to vote in Canada since 2002.

The United States has a higher proportion of its population in prison than any other Western nation, and more than Russia or China. The dramatic rise in the rate of incarceration in the United States, a 500% increase from the 1970s to the 1990s, has vastly increased the number of people disenfranchised because of the felon provisions. 

According to the Sentencing Project, as of 2010 an estimated 5.9 million Americans are denied the right to vote because of a felony conviction, a number equivalent to 2.5% of the U.S. voting-age population and a sharp increase from the 1.2 million people affected by felony disenfranchisement in 1976. Given the prison populations, the effects have been most disadvantageous for minority and poor communities.

Durational residency

The Supreme Court of the United States struck down one-year residency requirements to vote in Dunn v. Blumstein 405 U.S. 330 (1972). The Court ruled that limits on voter registration of up to 30 to 50 days prior to an election were permissible for logistical reasons, but that residency requirements in excess of that violated the equal protection clause, as granted under the Fourteenth Amendment, according to strict scrutiny. 

Disability

In some states, people who are deemed mentally incompetent are not allowed to vote. Voting rights specialist Michelle Bishop has said, "We are the last demographic within the U.S. where you can take away our right to vote because of our identity."

In the conservatorship process, people can lose their right to vote. In California, SB 589 was passed in 2015, which created the presumption that those under conservatorship can vote.

Homelessness


Obstacles homeless citizens face during voter registration

In the 1980s homelessness was recognized as an increasing national problem. By the early 21st century, there have been numerous court cases to help protect the voting rights of persons without a fixed address. Low income and homeless citizens face some obstacles in registering to vote. These obstacles include establishing residency, providing a mailing address, and showing proof of identification. A residency requirement varies from state to state. States cannot require citizens to show residency of more than 30 days before Election Day. The states of Idaho, Maine, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Wyoming allow voters to register on Election Day. North Dakota does not require voters to register.

In the 21st century, homeless persons in all states have the right to register and vote if they satisfy other conditions. In most states, when registering to vote, homeless voters may designate any place of residence, including a street corner, a park, a shelter, or any other location where an individual stays at night. A citizen may have only one residency during registration, but they may switch their registration each time they change locations. Designating residency is needed to prove that the citizen lives within the district where he or she wishes to vote. Some states also require a mailing address in order to send out the voter ID card, which the individual must show on Election Day. Some states allow individuals to use PO Boxes as mailing addresses; other states allow the address to be that of a local shelter, advocacy organization, outreach center, or anywhere else that accepts mail on behalf of a person registering to vote. States such as Arizona and Nebraska allow homeless citizens to use county court houses or county clerks' offices as mailing address.

States that do not require a mailing address include Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Montana, New Jersey, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

All potential voters face new requirements since 2002, when President Bush signed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). It requires voters to provide their driver's license numbers, or the last four digits of their Social Security Number on their voter registration form. This has been enforced.

The National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH) assists nonprofit organizations, in getting lower income and homeless citizens registered to vote. In 1992, the NCH created a campaign called "You don't need a home to vote". This campaign provided useful resources and guidelines for nonprofit organizations to follow when assisting citizens to register. Nonprofits, like homeless shelters and food banks, set up a voter registration party to help homeless citizens to register. The nonprofit workers must remain nonpartisan when assisting in the registration process.

Court cases involving homeless voting

Voting rights of the American homeless is an issue that has been addressed in the courts since the 1980s. Each state is responsible for voting regulations in their area; however, many states throughout America have adopted similar laws regarding homeless citizen voting. Disenfranchising the homeless is considered a violation of their rights under the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. Many arguments have been made against homeless people being able to vote. Their status of true citizenship has been called into question because of their lack of residency. However, the courts have ruled on more than one occasion in favor of the homeless voting.

One of the first court cases regarding homeless voting was Pitts v. Black (1984) in the US District Court of Southern New York, which ruled that disenfranchising homeless citizens is a direct violation of the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The case involved the New York Election Board and homeless individuals assisted by the Coalition for the Homeless, among others. The Election Board denied the individuals the right to vote because they resided on the street or in shelters. The Election Board contended that residency required some claim (such as rent) or ownership of the area on which they resided. Before the court decision was made, the Election Board relented slightly and allowed those living in shelters the right to vote. The District Court defined the meaning of "residence" as any fixed location which the individual intends to inhabit regularly. This ruling encompassed all homeless, including those residing on streets and in parks.

Two California court rulings, Collier v. Menzel, and Walters v. Weed, also addressed the residency question of homeless voters:
  • Collier v. Menzel (1985): The Santa Barbara District Court case established that a residence could be a certain location rather than a specific address. Howard Menzel, the county clerk, rejected three voter registration applications on the grounds that proper addresses were not provided. The applications simply stated a public park as the applicants' residence. The court overruled the clerk's decision and defined a residence as any fixed location where a person habitually sleeps and where living quarters are set up. In their final decisions, the court stated that denying a citizen the right to vote due to residence in a public park, is a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection clause.
  • Walters v. Weed (1988): In 1988, the California Supreme Court judged a case concerning voter precincts of those who are between residences. The court ruled that when a person leaves his former place of residence and has not yet settled in another permanent living place, then the individual may vote in the precinct of his former residence.

Special interest elections

Several locales retained restrictions for specialized local elections, such as for school boards, special districts, or bond issues. Property restrictions, duration of residency restrictions, and, for school boards, restrictions of the franchise to voters with children, remained in force. In a series of rulings from 1969 to 1973, the Court ruled that the franchise could be restricted in some cases to those "primarily interested" or "primarily affected" by the outcome of a specialized election, but not in the case of school boards or bond issues, which affected taxation to be paid by all residents. In Ball v. James 451 U.S. 335 (1981), the Court further upheld a system of plural voting, by which votes for the board of directors of a water reclamation district were allocated on the basis of a person's proportion of land owned in the district.

The Court has overseen operation of political party primaries to ensure open voting. While states were permitted to require voters to register for a political party 30 days before an election, or to require them to vote in only one party primary, the state could not prevent a voter from voting in a party primary if the voter has voted in another party's primary in the last 23 months. The Court also ruled that a state may not mandate a "closed primary" system and bar independents from voting in a party's primary against the wishes of the party. (Tashijan v. Republican Party of Connecticut 479 U.S. 208 (1986)).

The Office of Hawaiian Affairs of the state of Hawaii, created in 1978, limited voting eligibility and candidate eligibility to native Hawaiians on whose behalf it manages 1,800,000 acres (7,300 km2) of ceded land. The Supreme Court of the United States struck down the franchise restriction under the Fifteenth Amendment in Rice v. Cayetano 528 U.S. 495 (2000), following by eliminating the candidate restriction in Arakaki v. State of Hawai'i a few months later. 

Current status by region


District of Columbia

Citizens of the nation's capital, Washington, D.C., have not been apportioned a representative or US senator in Congress. This is because D.C. is a federal district and not a state and, under the Constitution, only states are apportioned congresspersons.

District of Columbia citizens had voting rights removed in 1801 by Congress, when Maryland delegated that portion of its land to Congress. Congress incrementally removed effective local control or home rule by 1871. It restored some home rule in 1971, but maintained the authority to override any local laws. Washington, D.C., does not have full representation in the U.S. House or Senate. The Twenty-third Amendment, restoring U.S. Presidential Election after a 164-year-gap, is the only known limit to Congressional "exclusive legislature" from Article I-8-17, forcing Congress to enforce for the first time Amendments 14, 15, 19, 24, and 26. It gave the District of Columbia three electors and hence the right to vote for President, but not full U.S. Congresspersons nor U.S. Senators. In 1978, another amendment was proposed which would have restored to the District a full seat, but it failed to receive ratification by a sufficient number of states within the seven years required.

As of 2013, a bill is pending in Congress that would treat the District of Columbia as "a congressional district for purposes of representation in the House of Representatives", and permit United States citizens residing in the capital to vote for a member to represent them in the House of Representatives. The District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act, S. 160, 111th Cong. was passed by the U.S. Senate on February 26, 2009, by a vote of 61-37.

On April 1, 1993, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States received a petition from Timothy Cooper on behalf of the Statehood Solidarity Committee (the "Petitioners") against the government of the United States (the "State" or "United States"). The petition indicated that it was presented on behalf of the members of the Statehood Solidarity Committee and all other U.S. citizens resident in the District of Columbia. The petition alleged that the United States was responsible for violations of Articles II (right to equality before law) and XX (right to vote and to participate in government) of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man in connection with the inability of citizens of the District of Columbia to vote for and elect a representative to the U.S. Congress. On December 29, 2003, The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights having examined the information and arguments provided by the parties on the question of admissibility. Without prejudging the merits of the matter, the Commission decided to admit the present petition in respect of Articles II and XX of the American Declaration. In addition, the Commission concluded that the United States violates the Petitioners' rights under Articles II and XX of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man by denying District of Columbia citizens an effective opportunity to participate in their federal legislature.

Overseas and nonresident citizens

U.S. citizens residing overseas who would otherwise have the right to vote are guaranteed the right to vote in federal elections by the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) of 1986. As a practical matter, individual states implement UOCAVA. 

A citizen who has never resided in the United States can vote if a parent is eligible to vote in certain states. In some of these states the citizen can vote in local, state and federal elections, in others in federal elections only. 

U.S. territories

U.S. citizens and non-citizen nationals who reside in American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, or the United States Virgin Islands are not allowed to vote in U.S. national and presidential elections, as these U.S. territories belong to the United States but do not have presidential electors. The U.S. Constitution requires a voter to be resident in one of the 50 states or in the District of Columbia to vote in federal elections. To say that the Constitution does not require extension of federal voting rights to U.S. territories residents does not, however, exclude the possibility that the Constitution may permit their enfranchisement under another source of law. Statehood or a constitutional amendment would allow people in the U.S. territories to vote in federal elections.

Like the District of Columbia, territories of the United States do not have U.S. senators representing them in the senate, and they each have one member of the House of Representatives who is not allowed to vote.

Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico is an insular area—a United States territory that is neither a part of one of the fifty states nor a part of the District of Columbia, the nation's federal district. Insular areas, such as Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam, are not allowed to choose electors in U.S. presidential elections or elect voting members to the U.S. Congress. This grows out of Article I and Article II of the United States Constitution, which specifically mandate that electors are to be chosen by "the People of the several States". In 1961, the Twenty-third Amendment extended the right to choose electors to the District of Columbia. 

Any U.S. citizen who resides in Puerto Rico (whether a Puerto Rican or not) is effectively disenfranchised at the national level. Although the Republican Party and Democratic Party chapters in Puerto Rico have selected voting delegates to the national nominating conventions participating in U.S. presidential primaries or caucuses, U.S. citizens not residing in one of the 50 states or in the District of Columbia may not vote in federal elections.

Various scholars (including a prominent U.S. judge in the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit) conclude that the U.S. national-electoral process is not fully democratic due to U.S. government disenfranchisement of U.S. citizens residing in Puerto Rico.

As of 2010, under Igartúa v. United States, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) is judicially considered not to be self-executing, and therefore requires further legislative action to put it into effect domestically. Judge Kermit Lipez wrote in a concurring opinion, however, that the en banc majority's conclusion that the ICCPR is non-self-executing is ripe for reconsideration in a new en banc proceeding, and that if issues highlighted in a partial dissent by Judge Juan R. Torruella were to be decided in favor of the plaintiffs, United States citizens residing in Puerto Rico would have a viable claim to equal voting rights.

Congress has in fact acted in partial compliance with its obligations under the ICCPR when, in 1961, just a few years after the United Nations first ratified the ICCPR, it amended our fundamental charter to allow the United States citizens who reside in the District of Columbia to vote for the Executive offices. See U.S. Constitutional Amendment XXIII.51. Indeed, a bill is now pending in Congress that would treat the District of Columbia as "a congressional district for purposes of representation in the House of Representatives", and permit United States citizens residing in the capitol to vote for members of the House of Representatives. See District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act, S.160, 111th Congress (passed by the Senate, February 26, 2009) (2009).52  However, the United States has not taken similar "steps" with regard to the five million United States citizens who reside in the other U.S. territories, of which close to four million are residents of Puerto Rico. This inaction is in clear violation of the United States' obligations under the ICCPR".

Accessibility

Federal legislation such as the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA, or "Motor-Voter Act") and the Help America Vote Act of 2001 (HAVA) help to address some of the concerns of disabled and non-English speaking voters in the United States.

Some studies have shown that polling places are inaccessible to disabled voters. The Federal Election Commission reported that, in violation of state and federal laws, more than 20,000 polling places across the nation are inaccessible, depriving people with disabilities of their fundamental right to vote.

In 1999, the Attorney General of the State of New York ran a check of polling places around the state to see if they were accessible to voters with disabilities and found many problems. A study of three upstate counties of New York found fewer than 10 percent of polling places fully compliant with state and federal laws.

Many polling booths are set in church basements or in upstairs meeting halls where there are no ramps or elevators. This means problems not just for people who use wheelchairs, but for people using canes or walkers too. And in most states people who are blind do not have access to Braille ballot to vote; they have to bring someone along to vote for them. Studies have shown that people with disabilities are more interested in government and public affairs than most and are more eager to participate in the democratic process. Many election officials urge people with disabilities to vote absentee, however some disabled individuals see this as an inferior form of participation.

Voter turnout is lower among the disabled. In the 2012 United States presidential election 56.8% of people with disabilities reported voting, compared to the 62.5% of eligible citizens without disabilities.

Candidacy requirements

Jurisprudence concerning candidacy rights and the rights of citizens to create a political party are less clear than voting rights. Different courts have reached different conclusions regarding what sort of restrictions, often in terms of ballot access, public debate inclusion, filing fees, and residency requirements, may be imposed.

In Williams v. Rhodes (1968), the United States Supreme Court struck down Ohio ballot access laws on First and Fourteenth Amendment grounds. However, it subsequently upheld such laws in several other cases. States can require an independent or minor party candidate to collect signatures as high as five percent of the total votes cast in a particular preceding election before the court will intervene.
The Supreme Court has also upheld a state ban on cross-party endorsements (also known as electoral fusion) and primary write-in votes. 

Noncitizen voting

More than 40 states or territories, including colonies before the Declaration of Independence, have at some time allowed noncitizens who satisfied residential requirements to vote in some or all elections. This in part reflected the strong continuing immigration to the United States. Some cities like Chicago, towns or villages (in Maryland) today allow noncitizen residents to vote in school or local elections. In 1875, the Supreme Court in Minor v. Happersett noted that "citizenship has not in all cases been made a condition precedent to the enjoyment of the right of suffrage. Thus, in Missouri, persons of foreign birth, who have declared their intention to become citizens of the United States, may under certain circumstances vote". Federal law prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections.
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Get out the vote

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Get_out_the_vote
 
Typical canvassing material for GOTV in the U.S.
 
"Get out the vote" (or "getting out the vote"; GOTV) describes efforts aimed at increasing the voter turnout in elections. In countries that do not have or enforce compulsory voting, voter turnout can be low, sometimes even below a third of the eligible voter pool. GOTV is generally not required for elections when there are effective compulsory voting systems in place, other than perhaps to register first time voters. 

There may be two types of political campaigns. The first is voter registration campaigns by electoral authorities or nonpartisan organizations that attempt to motivate potential voters to register and to vote. The second type is efforts made by political parties or politicians targeted at registered voters who are expected to vote in their favor. Campaigns typically attempt to register voters, then get them to vote, either by absentee ballot, early voting or election day voting.

Campaign contexts

In contexts of the efforts of candidates, party activities and ballot measure campaigns, "get-out-the-vote" or "GOTV" is an adjective indicating having the effect of increasing the number of the campaign's supporters who will vote in the immediately approaching election. 

Typically GOTV is a distinct phase of the overall campaign. Tactics used during GOTV often include: telephoning or sending personalized audio messages to known supporters on the days leading up to an election (or on election day itself), providing transport to and from polling stations for supporters, and canvassing known supporters.

Canvassing for the purpose of voter registration usually ceases when GOTV begins. Other activities include literature drops early on election day or the evening before and an active tracking of eligible voters who have already voted. 

The importance of get out the vote efforts increases as the total percentage of the population voting decreases. For instance, with only two-thirds of the population voting in a Canadian election it is often easier and more cost effective to ensure that a hundred supporters show up on polling day than it is to convince a hundred voters to switch support from one party to the other. This situation often leads to polarized electoral politics. A 90% turnout from a party's radical base is often better than a 50 percent turnout from both radical and moderate supporters.

GOTV can also be important in high turn-out elections when the margin of victory is expected to be close. 

Voter turnout organizations

In many countries, the task of electoral authorities includes the promotion of and assisting in the registration of potential voters, and in the exercise of the right to vote. However, such efforts are not uniformly successful, and at times are partisan.

A number of nonpartisan voter turnout organizations have formed in an effort to "get out the vote". In the United States, such voter turnout organizations include the League of Women Voters, Rock the Vote, The Voter Participation Center and Vote.org, which attempt to motivate potential voters to register and to vote in the belief that failure of any eligible voter to vote in any election is a loss to society. 

During 2016 Georgian parliamentary election President of Georgia Giorgi Margvelashvili supported an unprecedented Get out the vote campaign in Georgian history in terms of the scale of coverage, feedbacks, and results - a nation-wide campaign initiated by the Europe-Georgia Institute to increase involvement of youth in the elections.

Shortly before the elections the Europe-Georgia Institute started the "Your Voice, Our Future" (YVOF Campaign) in the village of Bazaleti [ka]. President Margvelashvil and George Melashvili, the head of the Europe-Georgia Institute addressed participants. Shortly after summer schools on civic engagement, political culture and "Get out the vote" campaigns were held in 10 different regions of Georgia. participants visited 20 cities and towns and held meetings with locals, describing and explaining the importance of voting. Young people planned creative activities such as Flash mobs, plays, theatre sketches and attracted media attention.

The effort of these organizations is in getting people to vote and not to promote particular candidates or political view, and a group is nonpartisan if it is not directing people how to vote. Nonpartisan groups generally do not distribute literature about candidates or causes when assisting potential voters to register to vote, and also do not focus GOTV efforts on voters who are most likely to agree with their personal views. 

Reading system

The traditional GOTV method used in the UK is the Reading system, developed by the Reading Constituency Labour Party and its MP Ian Mikardo for the 1945 general election. Once canvassing was performed to identify likely Labour voters, these were compiled onto 'Reading pads' or 'Mikardo sheets' featuring the names and addresses of supporters and pasted onto a large table or plank of wood. On election day these lists, with identical copies underneath, were torn off and given to GOTV campaigners. Lists of this type are sometimes referred to as Shuttleworths.

At each polling station, tellers for each party will collect the unique poll numbers of voters from their polling cards. These numbers are regularly collected from the polling stations and collated in a campaign headquarters for each ward, often referred to in the UK as a committee room. 'Promised voters' who have already voted are then crossed off the list of voters canvassed as supporting Labour. This enables campaigners to then focus more efficiently on the remainder of their supporters who have not voted. Computerisation has heralded further increases in efficiency, but nearly all subsequent methodologies can be traced back in some form to the Reading system. 

Negative campaigning and voter suppression

Robby Mook get out the vote leaflet for the Maryland gubernatorial election.
 
The terminology reflects a distinction of GOTV from the complementary strategy of suppressing turnout among likely opposition voters. Political consultants are reputed to privately advise some candidates to "go negative" (attack an opponent), without any intent to sway voters toward them: this plan is to instead increase the number of eligible voters who fail to vote, because their tendency to believe "politics is inherently corrupt" has so recently been reinforced. Such turnout suppression can be advantageous where any combination of three conditions apply:
  1. The negative campaigning is targeted (by direct mail, telephone "push polls," or the like) on likely opposing voters, reducing the collateral damage to supporters' morale.
  2. The side going negative has an advantage in its supporters being steadier voters than those of its opponent.
  3. The side going negative has an advantage in doing effective GOTV, so that its campaign workers can get a GOTV "antidote" to more supporters "poisoned" by the negative campaign, than the opposing campaign can of their own supporters.

Vote by mail

Face to face GOTV has been found to be less effective with Vote by mail balloting. 

Get out the vote in practice

Methods of raising turnout.
 
Political scientists have conducted hundreds of field experiments to learn which get out the vote tactics are effective, when, and on which types of voters. This research has revolutionized how campaigns conceive of their get out the vote efforts. Research also shows that voting is habit-forming, as voting in one election increases the probability of voting in a future election by 10 percentage points (controlling for other factors).

The value of GOTV is unclear, but a well-organized effort can gain a candidate as much as nine percentage points in campaigns in the United States. In terms of mobilization, studies have found that door-to-door canvassing increases turnout among the contacted households with approximately 4.3 percentage points, according to experts Alan Gerber and Gregory Huber in 2016 while a 2013 study of 71 canvasses including many that targeted low propensity voters found turnout increased by 2–3 percentage points. Even earlier, analysts had often concluded that personal canvassing produced far higher voter turnout rates, such as 9.8-12.8%. While most experiments have been conducted in the US, recent studies have found similar or somewhat smaller effects in Europe. 

The guide to grassroots elections Get Out the Vote determined that GOTV efforts averaged one vote every 15 door knocks by volunteers ($31 dollars per vote), 35 phone calls by volunteers ($35 dollars per vote), or 273 pieces of nonpartisan direct mail ($91 dollars per vote, no effect from partisan direct mail). They note that campaigns which experiment carefully can do better than these averages. Campaigns can raise turnout up to 8 percentage points with direct mail which tells neighbors when other neighbors have voted and promises to mail an update after the election, though people complain when they have no way to opt in or out of notification.

Other studies have found that GOTV methods contribute little to none to voter turnout. One field experiment found that GOTV phone calls were largely ineffective, and that ease of access to polling locations had the largest impact on voter turnout.

There is also the argument that GOTV targets a more affluent demographic, which is already more likely to vote. Less politically engaged demographic and socioeconomic groups are sometimes neglected in GOTV efforts.

GOTV is often most effective when potential voters are told to do so "because others will ask." Voters will then go to the polls as a means of fulfilling perceived societal expectations. Paradoxically, informing voters that turnout is expecting to be high was found to increase actual voter turnout, while predicting lower turnouts actually resulted in less voters.

In 2004 Rock the Vote paid to run TV ads aimed at young voters, on a random sample of small cable systems where they could measure the effects. Turnout was three percentage points higher among 18-19-year olds in these sample areas than in the control group covered by other similar small cable systems; there was less effect above age 22.

In November 2012 and 2013 Rock the Vote experimented with Facebook ads to encourage voter turnout by telling people the number of days remaining until the election and which of their friends "liked" the countdown. The ads were shown to over 400,000 adults, randomly selected from a base over 800,000. Rock the Vote had helped many of them register. The ads did not increase turnout in the experimental group, compared to the control group who did not get the ads. In 2012 they also experimented with text message reminders to 180,000 people who had provided their mobile numbers. Texts the day before the election raised turnout six tenths of a percentage point, while texts on election day lowered turnout.

Several mobile apps tell people where to vote, identify their elected officials, or search candidates' positions, though no evidence measures how much these raise turnout. Facebook apps let users see who their friends endorse, which gives them a shortcut in deciding whom to vote for.

Studies in 2012 and 2017 found that Facebook's “I’m Voting/I’m a Voter” button increased turnout in the 2010 Congressional elections by six tenths of a percentage point, and in the 2012 presidential election by a quarter of a percentage point. It named their friends who had clicked the voting button, thus opting in and minimizing complaints. However the button only appeared on election day, so it did not let friends track and encourage each other throughout the early voting period which most states have. It has been used in many elections throughout the world since then, without clarity on which users see it, leading to concerns on how it biases turnout.

Groups such as Postcards To Voters send handwritten postcards to potential voters ahead of elections in hopes of increasing turnout. A 2007 study showed that handwritten notes were three times as effective as machine-printed ones.
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Voter turnout in the United States presidential elections

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_the_United_States_presidential_elections
 
The broadest historical trends in voter turnout in the United States presidential elections have been determined by the gradual expansion of voting rights from the initial restriction to male property owners aged twenty-one or older in the early years of the country's independence, to all citizens aged eighteen or older in the mid-twentieth century. Voter turnout in the presidential elections has historically been better than the turnout for midterm elections.

Age, education, and income

Rates of voting in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election by income
 
Rates in voting in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election by educational attainment
 
Age, income and educational attainment are significant factors affecting voter turnout. Educational attainment is perhaps the best predictor of voter turnout, and in the 2008 election those holding advanced degrees were three times more likely to vote than those with less than high school education. Income correlated well with likelihood of voting as well, although this may be because of a correlation between income and educational attainment, rather than a direct effect of income. 

Age difference is associated with youth voter turnout. Berman and Johnson's (2000) argument affirms that "age is an important factor in understanding voting blocs and differences" on various issues. Young people are typically "plagued" by political apathy and thus do not have strong political opinions (The Economist, 2014). As strong political opinions may be considered one of the reasons behind voting (Munsey, 2008), political apathy among young people is arguably a predictor for low voter turnout. Pomante and Schraufnagel's (2014) research demonstrated that potential young voters are more willing to commit to vote when they see pictures of younger candidates running for elections/office or voting for other candidates, surmising that young Americans are "voting at higher and similar rates to other Americans when there is a candidate under the age of 35 years running". As such, since most candidates running for office are pervasively over the age of 35 years (Struyk, 2017), youth may not be actively voting in these elections because of a lack of representation or visibility in the political process. "Only 30 per cent of millennials think it's 'essential' to live in a democracy, compared to 72 percent of those born before World War II" (Gershman, 2018). Considering that one of the critical tenets of liberal democracy is voting, the idea that millennials are denouncing the value of democracy is arguably an indicator of the loss of faith in the importance of voting. Thus, it can be surmised that those of younger ages may not be inclined to vote during elections. 

Education is another factor considered to have a major impact on voter turnout rates. Burden (2009) investigated the relationship between formal education levels and voter turnout. He demonstrated the effect of rising enrollment in college education circa 1980s, which – as expected - did result in an increase in voter turnout. However, "this was not true for political knowledge" (Burden, 2009); a rise in education levels did not have any impact in identifying those with political knowledge (a signifier of civic engagement) until the 1980s election, when college education became a distinguishing factor in identifying civic participation. This article poses a multifaceted perspective on the effect of education levels on voter turnout. Based on this article, one may surmise that education has become a more powerful predictor of civic participation, discriminating more between voters and non-voters. However, this was not true for political knowledge; education levels were not a signifier of political knowledge. Gallego (2010) also contends that voter turnout tends to be higher in localities where voting mechanisms have been established and are easy to operate – i.e. voter turnout and participation tends to be high in instances where registration has been initiated by the state and the number of electoral parties is small. One may contend that ease of access – and not education level – may be an indicator of voting behavior. Presumably larger, more urban cities will have greater budgets/resources/infrastructure dedicated to elections, which is why youth may have higher turnout rates in those cities versus more rural areas. Though youth in larger (read: urban) cities tend to be more educated than those in rural areas (Marcus & Krupnick, 2017), perhaps there is an external variable (i.e. election infrastructure) at play. Smith and Tolbert's (2005) research reiterates that the presence of ballot initiatives and portals within a state have a positive effect on voter turnout. Another correlated finding in his study (Snyder, 2011) was that education is less important as a predictor of voter turnout in states than tend to spend more on education. Moreover, Snyder's (2011) research suggests that students are more likely to vote than non-students. It may be surmised that an increase of state investment in electoral infrastructure facilitates and education policy and programs results in increase voter turnout among youth. 

Wealthier people tend to vote at higher rates. Harder and Krosnick (2008) contend that some of the reasons for this may be due to "differences in motivation or ability (sometimes both)" (Harder and Krosnick, 2008), or that less wealthy people have less energy, time, or resources to allot towards voting. Another potential reason may be that wealthier people believe that they have more at stake if they don't vote than those with less resources or income. Maslow's hierarchy of needs might also help explain this hypothesis from a psychological perspective. If those with low income are struggling to meet the basic survival needs of food, water, safety, etc., they will not be motivated enough to reach the final stages of "Esteem" or "Self-actualization" needs (Maslow, 1943) – which consist of the desire for dignity, respect, prestige and realizing personal potential, respectively. 

Women's suffrage and gender gap

There was no systematic collection of voter turnout data by gender at a national level before 1964, but smaller local studies indicate a low turnout among female voters in the years following Women's suffrage in the United States. For example, a 1924 study of voting turnout in Chicago found that "female Chicagoans were far less likely to have visited the polls on Election Day than were men in both the 1920 presidential election (46% vs. 75%) and the 1923 mayoral contest (35% vs. 63%)." The study compared reasons given by male and female non-voters, and found that female non-voters were more likely to cite general indifference to politics and ignorance or timidity regarding elections than male non-voters, and that female voters were less likely to cite fear of loss of business or wages. Most significantly, however, 11% of female non-voters in the survey cited a "Disbelief in woman's voting" as the reason they did not vote. 

The graph of voter turnout percentages shows a dramatic decline in turnout over the first two decades of the twentieth century, ending in 1920, when the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution granted women the right to vote across the United States. But in the preceding decades, several states had passed laws supporting women's suffrage. Women were granted the right to vote in Wyoming in 1869, before the territory had become a full state in the union. In 1889, when the Wyoming constitution was drafted in preparation for statehood, it included women's suffrage. Thus Wyoming was also the first full state to grant women the right to vote. In 1893, Colorado was the first state to amend an existing constitution in order to grant women the right to vote, and several other states followed, including Utah and Idaho in 1896, Washington State in 1910, California in 1911, Oregon, Kansas, and Arizona in 1912, Alaska and Illinois in 1913, Montana and Nevada in 1914, New York in 1917; Michigan, South Dakota, and Oklahoma in 1918. Each of these suffrage laws expanded the body of eligible voters, and because women were less likely to vote than men, each of these expansions created a decline in voter turnout rates, culminating with the extremely low turnouts in the 1920 and 1924 elections after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.

Voter turnout by sex and age for the 2008 US Presidential Election.
 
This voting gender gap waned throughout the middle decades of the twentieth century, and in recent decades has completely reversed, with a higher proportion of women voting than men in each of the last nine presidential elections. The Center for American Women and Politics summarizes how this trend can be measured differently both in terms of proportion of voters to non-voters, and in terms of the bulk number of votes cast. "In every presidential election since 1980, the proportion of eligible female adults who voted has exceeded the proportion of eligible male adults who voted [...]. In all presidential elections prior to 1980, the voter turnout rate for women was lower than the rate for men. The number of female voters has exceeded the number of male voters in every presidential election since 1964..." This gender gap has been a determining factor in several recent presidential elections, as women have been consistently about 15% more likely to support the candidate of the Democratic Party than the Republican candidate in each election since 1996.

Race, ethnicity, and voter turnout

Voter turnout in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election by race/ethnicity.
 
The passage of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution gave African American men the right to vote. While this historic expansion of rights resulted in significant increases in the eligible voting population, and may have contributed to the increases in the proportion of votes cast for president as a percentage of the total population during the 1870s, there does not seem to have been a significant long-term increase in the percentage of eligible voters who turn out for the poll. The disenfranchisement of most African Americans and many poor whites in the South during the years 1890-1910 likely contributed to the decline in overall voter turnout percentages during those years visible in the chart at the top of the article. Ethnicity has had an effect on voter turnout in recent years as well, with data from recent elections such as 2008 showing much lower turnout among people identifying as Hispanic or Asian ethnicity than other voters.

Youth voting turnout

Recent decades have seen increasing concern over the fact that youth voting turnout is consistently lower than turnout among older generations. Several programs to increase the rates of voting among young people—such as MTV's "Rock the Vote" (founded in 1990) and the "Vote or Die" initiative (starting in 2004)—may have marginally increased turnouts of those between the ages of 18 and 25 to vote. However, the Stanford Social Innovation Review found no evidence of a decline in youth voter turnout. In fact, they argue that "Millennials are turning out at similar rates to the previous two generations when they face their first elections."

Other eligibility factors

Another factor influencing statistics on voter turnout is the percentage of the country's voting-age population who are ineligible to vote due to non-citizen status or prior felony convictions. In a 2001 article in the American Political Science Review, Michael McDonald and Samuel Popkin argued, that at least in the United States, voter turnout since 1972 has not actually declined when calculated for those eligible to vote, what they term the voting-eligible population. In 1972, noncitizens and ineligible felons (depending on state law) constituted about 2% of the voting-age population. By 2004, ineligible voters constituted nearly 10%. Ineligible voters are not evenly distributed across the country – 20% of California's voting-age population is ineligible to vote – which confounds comparisons of states.

Turnout statistics

U.S. presidential election popular vote totals as a percentage of the total U.S. population. Note the surge in 1828 (extension of suffrage to non-property-owning white men), the drop from 1890–1910 (when Southern states disenfranchised most African Americans and many poor whites), and another surge in 1920 (extension of suffrage to women). Note also that this chart represents the number of votes cast as a percentage of total population, and does not compare either of those quantities with the percentage of the population that was eligible to vote.
 
Election Voting Age Population (VAP) Turnout % Turnout of VAP
1789


1792


1796


1800


1804


1808


1812


1816


1820


1824


1828

57.6%
1832

55.4%
1836

57.8%
1840

80.2%
1844

78.9%
1848

72.7%
1852

69.6%
1856

78.9%
1860

81.2%
1864

73.8%
1868

78.1%
1872

71.3%
1876

81.8%
1880

79.4%
1884

77.5%
1888

79.3%
1892

74.7%
1896

79.3%
1900

73.2%
1904

65.2%
1908

65.4%
1912

58.8%
1916

61.6%
1920

49.2%
1924

48.9%
1928

56.9%
1932 75,768,000 39,817,000 52.6%
1936 80,174,000 45,647,000 56.9%
1940 84,728,000 49,815,000 58.8%
1944 85,654,000 48,026,000 56.1%
1948 95,573,000 48,834,000 51.1%
1952 99,929,000 61,552,000 61.6%
1956 104,515,000 62,027,000 59.3%
1960 109,672,000 68,836,000 62.8%
1964 114,090,000 70,098,000 61.4%
1968 120,285,000 73,027,000 60.7%
1972 140,777,000 77,625,000 55.1%
1976 152,308,000 81,603,000 53.6%
1980 163,945,000 86,497,000 52.8%
1984 173,995,000 92,655,000 53.3%
1988 181,956,000 91,587,000 50.3%
1992 189,493,000 104,600,000 55.2%
1996 196,789,000 96,390,000 49.0%
2000 209,787,000 105,594,000 50.3%
2004 219,553,000 122,349,000 55.7%
2008 229,945,000 131,407,000 58.2%
2012 235,248,000 129,235,000 54.9%
2016 250,056,000 138,847,000 55.7%

Note: The Bipartisan Policy Center has stated that turnout for 2012 was 57.5 percent of the eligible voters, which they claim was a decline from 2008. They estimate that as a percent of eligible voters, turn out was: 2000, 54.2%; in 2004 60.4%; 2008 62.3%; and 2012 57.5%.

Later analysis by the University of California, Santa Barbara's American Presidency Project found that there were 235,248,000 people of voting age in the United States in the 2012 election, resulting in 2012 voting age population (VAP) turnout of 54.9%. The total increase in VAP between 2008 and 2012 (5,300,000) was the smallest increase since 1964, bucking the modern average of 8,000,000–13,000,000 per cycle.
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