Straight Ticket Voting Research Paper

     In the following essay I will be talking about the disadvantages and advantages of partisan elections for state politics. I will also examine the last couple year’s election results and costs. Finally, I will discuss if partisanship made a difference in the vote, as well as if a judge should be decided by partisan vote. In the next couple paragraphs I will talk more specifically about these topics.

Voting has not always been as easy as it is today. It is interesting to examine how far America has progressed in its process of allowing different types of people to be able to vote. Voting was once aimed at a particular group of people, which were white males that owned their own property. Today, most people over the age of eighteen can vote, except for the mentally incompetent or people who have been convicted of major felonies in some states. The decline of voter participation has always been a debate in the public arena. According to McDonald and Popkin, it is “the most important, most familiar, most analyzed, and most conjectured trend in recent American political history (2001, 963)” The question is, how important is voter

Throughout America’s history the franchise has been withheld from different groups. This has been possible due to weakly written laws that do not provide adequate protections. In 1965 PL 89-110 was passed, this law, commonly known as the Voting Rights Act of 1965, finally provided real protections for minorities living in southern states. In recent years the language of the law was modified within the Supreme Court to take away the law’s primary power. In the following mock Congressional testimony we will go back to 1848, 13 years before the American Civil War, and provide evidence of why a law like PL 89-110 is necessary and commendable.

Riker argues that these bold uses of gerrymandering are made possible, and even encouraged, by two landmark Supreme Court Cases. Baker v. Carr and Reynolds v. Sims were two similar cases from the 1960’s that addressed the unequal representation caused by the unwillingness of politicians to adjust the electoral districts to accurately reflect the major population changes of the twentieth century.15 Baker v. Carr and Reynolds v. Sims forced Congress and state legislative bodies to correct this inaccurate political representation by mandating equally sized voting districts.16 In fact, Reynolds v. Sims went so far as to require a voting population difference of no more than ten percent between the largest and smallest electoral districts.17 Furthermore,

Nearly 100 years after the 15th amendment was ratified, vast disparities and blatant discrimination in voting process and practice were still pervasive, particularly in certain southern states like Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) was enacted by congress to address this enduring inequity. Section 5 of the VRA requires that states meeting criteria set out in section 4(b) of the act, must obtain federal “preclearance” before enacting any laws that affect voting. Section 4(b) provides the conditions for the preclearance requirement as state or jurisdictions where less than 50% of minorities were registered to vote in 1964.

During the course of the past few decades, the United States of America faced hundreds of issues that impact the nation’s view of leadership. Some people of the United States believe that the issues that face America involves those in office, while others believe that the issue is structural. In the case of America today, there is a momentous structural difficulty in our voting system. Furthermore, the most distinct problem that the United States handles today is gerrymandering. Throughout this essay, it will be made clear that gerrymandering is the leading problem facing America today because it harms the equality of citizens.

In the following essay I will be talking about the disadvantages and advantages of partisan elections for state politics. I will also examine the last couple year's election results and costs. Finally, I will discuss if partisanship made a difference in the vote, as well as if a judge should be decided by partisan vote. In the next couple paragraphs I will talk more specifically about these topics.

Murphy, Bruce. "Murphy's Law: The Most Gerrymandered State in America.” Urban Milwaukee Murphy’s Law The Most Gerrymandered State in America Comments. N.p., 6 Aug. 2015. Web. 11 Jan. 2016.

On January 6, 2015 Democratic Congressional woman Sheila Jackson Lee, who represents the D-TX 18th District introduced the H.R.75 – Coretta Scott King Mid-Decade Redistricting Prohibition Act of 2015. This is a liberal piece of legislation, as it is introduced from a Democrat, and is supported by fellow Democrats. From the Hill “Reps. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.), Donald Payne (D-N.J.), Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and Marc Veasey (D-Texas) have publicly supported the bill. From the Hill Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) would say in support for the bill "Congress should quickly act to set those standards in place, so that every American can be confident that their vote will be counted

Our nation's reliance upon winner-take-all elections and single member districts for Congressional elections without national standards has left our voting process open to the abuses of unfair partisan gerrymandering. In the Partisan Gerrymandering simulation game I played, I found that it was more difficult to draw my party lines due to the fact there were many voters that were opposite of my political views. I really had to Gerrymander to win my districts, but I did in the best interests of my constituents (or at least that’s what my created politician would think!). The Court ruling on my plan stated that I did not meet compactness laws but it was still approved. As far as the current laws on gerrymandering, six justices in 2006 produced 123 pages of opinions, without any five of them able to agree on how to define an unconstitutional gerrymander. Politicians of both parties said that the ruling over the 2003 Congressional

Although the states had begun their journey towards a democracy with voting, elected officials, and campaigning, the implementation varied from state to state in regard to how these laws were discriminatory towards minorities and women.   Unfortunately, there is still a prevalence of sexism and racism in the contemporary society resembling the scars of our leaders’ failures in creating our democracy. The history of the United States can be simplified to the fight for suffrage and the expansion of it to everyone, as long as they were white and male. Voting practices suggest American politics were becoming more democratic as there was an increase in access and participation that created a better, but not perfect, representation of more people and ideas throughout the states.

This single party dominance tended to limit the range of political debate, in turn constraining the evolution of the state’s political culture. Elections have gone through a huge set of changes over the last 40 years. With the barriers of all-white primaries, the poll tax and economic harassment it made the election process in Texas less democratic. While those barriers have been overcome, primarily through federal action, one-party’s persisted throughout the state making Democratic Party primaries more important than the November general election. From the Civil War to the civil rights struggles in the 1950’s and 60’s—which was an essential time when there was a systematic exclusion of Blacks and other minorities from political participation. As the effort to end the exclusion of minorities got underway, the party system that had been long dominated by the Democrats began to unravel. The civil rights victories in the 1960’s, especially the national Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, helped set in motion a realignment of the two main political parties. (utexas) It is said that Texas has transformed into a two-party system that is very competitive. Today, the Republican Party holds all the major statewide offices and has held majority control of both chambers since 2003. However beginning in the 1950’s, conservative Democrats joined the growing ranks of Republicans in supporting Republican Party candidates for president. (Collier)

The Voting Rights Act 42 U.S.C. §§ 1973 et seq., decision is important regarding the laws governing voting rights and their relationship to minority voters. Its implication and effects however does not end within the legal realms and dimensions but continues through to society, culture, and human rights. The Voting Rights Act initially established in 1965 under Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration protected “racial minorities” from biased voting practices. It was a huge stride in the civil rights movement and a victory over harmful, archaic, and biased voting practices and traditions.

America is vastly known as a country boundlessly pursuing equality in all facets of life. In this seemingly endless quest for equal opportunity, there has been one lurking negation; our election system. The addition to equal representation in public funding and on the ballot will create variability and allow Americans to entrust their vote in a political format that more closely aligns with democratic philosophy. Therefore, a shift away from a bipartisan, a two party, dominated election system would not only be a healthy change for American electoral satisfaction, but for the future of third party politics. Unfortunately affluence and inherent wealth have played a large role in this divide between a true democratic election and our present biased, broken, and benyne system.

Historically in America, voting has been a relatively discriminatory practice. It has limited and deprived many individuals of many diverse races, ethnicities, and walks of life from casting their votes to select the individual who they feel is most educated, and skilled to represent their interests. Not only has this been proven to be wrong by discriminating minority groups in voting, it also has proved to be a process, which minimizes the largest growing demographics in the country. Furthermore, with millennials growing to become more politically active, minority groups are becoming more politically involved than ever. Taking this into account an important question that is raised by the author William Eskridge in his book “Legislation and Statutory Interpretation” is “Would minorities be better off with more representatives who had to pay attention to their interests because they are a powerful and organized constituency, rather than with a few representatives of minority districts who specialize in protecting only their interests?” (Eskridge,Frickley,& Garrett, 2006, pp.55).