It is interesting to look at how individuals choose for whom they vote. I just read a book called “Thank You for Voting: the maddening, enlightening, inspiring truth about voting in America.” The writer is a journalist who said the book is non-partisan, however it was left leaning, but interesting perspective. At the beginning of the book a quote: “You owe it to yourself. Be sure to vote.”
Each generation votes at a lower percentage. Each person is motivated by their individual issues, such as economy, jobs, being able to buy a home, and immigration. The most reliable voters are driven by civic duty.
One of the founding fathers, John Adams, wrote in 1776 what would happen when men who didn’t own property were allowed to vote. Early voting was limited to only male land owners. Adams said we must keep the voting power for ourselves or people will feel they are entitled to it. Heavens, everyone would be equal. The nightmare!! However, in 1776 the new constitution in Pennsylvania did not require property ownership. For about thirty years, women and free black men could vote in New Jersey, but that ended in 1807 when the state legislature limited voting to white property-owning men.
As America grew, people learned to use their voices to advocate for themselves and used the language in the Constitution to argue that equal should mean equal and that citizenship didn’t count for much if you didn’t have the vote.
You hear about Jim Crow laws, and it is unclear how the name came about. In 1887, the New York Times used it as a name of a train car in Georgia, where a black man complained about being forced to sit in it. The complaint was about white men taking seat in the black train cars when there was seat available in their own.
It was 95 years between then and the passage of the 15th Amendment and the Voting Rights Act. In 1896, Plesy vs Ferguson established the doctrine of separate but equal. This was the act of creating separate everything – separate drinking fountains, separate train cars, separate businesses, separate parts of communities and schools. For instance, in a train car, a black person could be present if she was a nurse/nanny for a white child. Eventually, Plesy was overruled by Brown vs the Board of Education in Topeka, Kansas. This case called for the end of segregated public schools (1954). Minorities had to take literacy tests in order to vote, and poll taxes to keep minorities and poor from voting. Native Americans were not even counted in the census and were not considered to be human back in the day. The 1965 Voting Rights Act was the undoing of discriminatory voting laws, but this may have never happened without the violent day in Selma, Alabama. Many of us remember or heard about the march from Selma to Montgomery Alabama to protest the shooting death of a black man by a state trooper.
Starting in the late 1800’s the women’s suffrage movement began and in 1869, women in the State of Wyoming were allowed to vote as part of an effort to get women to move here. Women’s suffrage in the State of Wyoming continued when the territory became a state in 1890, but changed shortly after. Women were not allowed to vote until 1921.
Ronald Reagan said in 1982 “The right to vote is the crown jewel of American liberties, and we will not see its luster diminished.
There are several problems with our voting system in America. For one, there is no consistent parameters for voting. Each state has different voting statutes. It can be confusing for voters. Three things’ voters want to know: How do I register; where do I go to vote and who is on the ballot.
Now we reply on social media, television, and our friends to tell us who to vote for. Social media and major news outlets tout polls as to who is ahead and leading. Recently I came across a new phenomenon called: Social desirability bias or the Bradley Effect. It describes the discrepancy between what voters report as their opinions and attitudes on surveys and to pollsters, and their subsequent inaction in the voting booth. The Bradley effect is named after popular former mayor of Los Angeles when he ran for governor of California. The polls indicated Bradley was the favorite, however on election day he lost to his opponent, George Deukmejian. The Bradley Effect makes it difficult for pollsters and analysts to predict an election outcome because voters say one thing and do another.
So, how do voters decide who to vote for? Three nodes in the process: contract, trigger and reaction or response. First, we make contact with the identity such as race, gender, age, wealth or profession; second it triggers association with that person and their identities, and third, it is a resource or reaction to trusted sources such as friends, family, mentors, influencers, education and our personal experiences. What influences you in how you vote?
Dr. Barb
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