Dr. Dan Ponder is L.E. Meador Professor of Political Science at Drury University. In order to better understand voting and election integrity today I asked Dr. Ponder to tell me about the history of voting in the U.S. In part one of our conversation Ponder told me about the 19th century. For one, they were on a very different schedule.
“For a long-time, congressional elections (and) presidential elections were held at different times. In many cases,” he said, “members of congress would not actually show up in Washington for over a year.”
The 19th century was also a time of powerful parties, and little to no promise of a secret ballot. The very controversial election of 1876 shook things up a bit, and as we got closer to the 1900s, the right to vote in some states began to expand to women. That right was politicized of course.
“A lot of times they would allow (women) to vote for President, but not any of the other ones, because President at that time was still seen as... far away.”
That would change with the 19th amendment, but more people were being involved in the process in other ways too. A major step was the growth of primary elections for President.
“Few states had delegates that were selected in primaries,” he explained “but you still had primaries, and they were seen as what was called at the time, sort of beauty contests. In other words, they were non-binding, but they gave party officials who would eventually make the decisions at the convention, it gave them an idea of who might have some real pull.”
And like much of American politics, it was all refined again after a crisis. This one was later, the 1968 Democratic National Convention. It infamously resulted in mass violence on the streets of Chicago, at least partially in response to how the party was choosing its candidate.
“There was a movement to change the way the rules were made. That was the McGovern-Frasier Commission," Ponder explained. “By 1972 Democrats had gone to more representation, and you had more and more delegates being selected formally in the series of primaries or caucuses. The Republicans followed suit by 1976 or so, fairly quickly after that.”
The 60’s and early 70’s were a volatile time in America, primary reforms were intended to be more transparent and democratic and to bring the eras disaffected youth back into the fold, the 26th amendment to the constitution lowered the minimum age for voting to 18, expanding on that vision, but the turbulent times shook trust in the government like never before.
“Starting with Vietnam and more or less ending with Watergate there was a dramatic decline in trust of government,” he said, citing polling from the time.
And the Voting Rights Act of 1965 had both brought the vote to thousands of disenfranchised African Americans and pushed new divisions into U.S. politics.
“The expansion of the voting Rights Act, which of course made its greatest impact in the South is one of the things that lead to a lot of formerly white Democratic southerners changing their party affiliation to Republican, feeling that they had been left out.”
These 20th century events helped set the course for many of the tensions surrounding voting today, for one, we continue to debate about the Voting Rights Act now that it has largely been dismantled, but the first presidential election of the 21st century cast its own shadow as well.
In 2000, George W. Bush faced Al Gore for the presidency. In a rush to call it and with limited data, news networks gave Florida to Gore early in the evening
“Eventually the networks withdrew that call,” Ponder said. “Then it switched to Bush. Then it went to the courts, about whether or not they should continue to count votes or not.”
The 2000 election underscores how important perceptions are, and how in our modern era we expect instant results. It also prompted a move away from potentially confusing butterfly ballots that created problems during the recount and a move towards optical scan ballots like we use today.
As we wrapped up our conversation, I asked Dr. Ponder about two maps with ratings of the perception of election integrity for every state, one from the Heritage Foundation another from a group called the Election Integrity Project. After giving them a quick assessment, Dr. Ponder said the differences between their criteria and outcomes were not surprising.
“The arguments that are put forth on either side are directly linked to what the overall goals are and so there’s all these things that keep coming into play,” he explained. “It’s sort of a tug-of-war battle to either make it easier to vote, and if it’s easier to vote, easier to vote for whom, or harder to vote, harder to vote for whom. These are the kinds of things that play out in the states and sometimes the courts weigh in and sometimes they don’t.”
My look back with Dr. Ponder, at U.S. presidential elections and voting, left the impression of a work in progress often tested and refined through periods of crisis and marked by major moments of the polarizing expansion of the vote.
It also shows a series of events that have legitimately shaken public trust in the government. Additionally, I see a decentralized system, dividing responsibilities between states, counties and the federal government and organizations like political parties.
In the rest of our series, we’ll explore how some of those local public officials are on the front lines of elections and how they work to earn and keep our trust.