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When survey research, statistics, and electronic data processing were first introduced, they held out promise that a new level of political knowledge would be created. Applied to the study of voting behavior, survey research promised an understanding of the factors determining the outcome of an election, that political history could be based on rich and current data, and that we could begin to understand the role of elections in constitutional democracy. The truth as Peter B. Natchez shows, is that despite the opportunity provided by this revolution, voting studies have failed to make significant contributions to democratic theory or political history.The findings of voting studies have spread from the universities into the political system with a rather grim message. In its simplest form the message is this: the electorate does not measure up to the task thrust upon it by democracy. The studies conclude that voters choose candidates for reasons having little relevance to the success of the political system, and little relevance even to politics. Thus political science, in shifting from an optimistic focus on theory to a strong emphasis on empiricism, became a source of pessimism.One cannot study democracy or the democratic process without a point of view on democracy. The scientific method requires a point of view: science is not only a method for discovering reality, but for addressing well-structured questions. Natchez identifies goals for democracy, freedom and tolerance, and consciousness in decision making. Elections serve two functions; one, filling constitutional offices, and two, a symbolic function rooted in democratic experience that is more ambiguous, but no less vital as a part of regime analysis. A political science that connects these two aspects of voting will require an analysis of why voters vote the way they do to fill offices; but, more importantly, it will also require an understanding of the symbolic function of elections.
This text explores elections as instruments of democracy. Focusing on elections in 20 democracies over the last 25 years, it examines the differences between two visions of democracy - the majoritarian vision and the proportional influence vision.
During the 2016 presidential election, America's election infrastructure was targeted by actors sponsored by the Russian government. Securing the Vote: Protecting American Democracy examines the challenges arising out of the 2016 federal election, assesses current technology and standards for voting, and recommends steps that the federal government, state and local governments, election administrators, and vendors of voting technology should take to improve the security of election infrastructure. In doing so, the report provides a vision of voting that is more secure, accessible, reliable, and verifiable.
This Is What Democracy Looked Like, the first illustrated history of printed ballot design, illuminates the noble but often flawed process at the heart of our democracy. An exploration and celebration of US ballots from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this visual history reveals unregulated, outlandish, and, at times, absurd designs that reflect the explosive growth and changing face of the voting public. The ballots offer insight into a pivotal time in American history—a period of tectonic shifts in the electoral system—fraught with electoral fraud, disenfranchisement, scams, and skullduggery, as parties printed their own tickets and voters risked their lives going to the polls.
A pathbreaking study of political culture in the United States, Britain, and Canada, Partial Visions demonstrates how popular culture--expressed through television soap operas and comedies, civics and history textbooks, magazine advertisements, and corporate publications and recruitment leaflets--subtly deflects and suppresses democratic political action. Richard Merelman argues that political messages embedded in popular culture weaken the division between public and private and between society and the individual. These "partial visions" of democracy are idealized yet inequitable, revelatory yet distorted. As a result, issues that might galvanize useful group conflict do not emerge, and the full potential for public participation in a liberal democracy remains unrealized. Britain, Canada, and the United States share a liberal political culture but differ in their historical evolution and in the structure of their institutions. Each country, Merelman suggests, has developed a distinctive popular culture that shapes public opinion and stifles political debate in nationally specific ways. Different rhetorical devices and metaphors operate in each nation, he points out; in Britain, for example, the monarchy and party system serve as symbols of political reconciliation between the individual and the collectivity. Characterizing the United States as a culture of "institutionalized individualism" and Canada as a culture of emotionally tepid group conflict, Merelman finds Britain's culture of group-based political debate the most successful in encouraging democratic participation. Drawing on symbolic anthropology, poststructuralist literary theory, and positivistic analyses of attitudes and media influence, Merelman conducts a controlled comparison of media representations, political discourse, and public opinion, using rich, complex sets of quantitative and qualitative data . He concludes that culture is not reducible to institutional interests but is intelligible as a whole structure; furthermore, culture can and sometimes does change the contours of political conflict.
The Reasoning Voter is an insider's look at campaigns, candidates, media, and voters that convincingly argues that voters make informed logical choices. Samuel L. Popkin analyzes three primary campaigns—Carter in 1976; Bush and Reagan in 1980; and Hart, Mondale, and Jackson in 1984—to arrive at a new model of the way voters sort through commercials and sound bites to choose a candidate. Drawing on insights from economics and cognitive psychology, he convincingly demonstrates that, as trivial as campaigns often appear, they provide voters with a surprising amount of information on a candidate's views and skills. For all their shortcomings, campaigns do matter. "Professor Popkin has brought V.O. Key's contention that voters are rational into the media age. This book is a useful rebuttal to the cynical view that politics is a wholly contrived business, in which unscrupulous operatives manipulate the emotions of distrustful but gullible citizens. The reality, he shows, is both more complex and more hopeful than that."—David S. Broder, The Washington Post
Democratic theory promises that government will protect the interests of the citizenry and follow majority will in its policies. To put theory into practice, voters must be capable, elections must be meaningful, and parties must be responsible. For over two decades, Gerald Pomper has explored the empirical realities of contemporary democracy. The book features a comprehensive introductory essay, stating the major themes of this work. Each of the three major sections is preceded by Pomper's reappraisal of previous writings, both published and unpublished.
In American politics, at least since the Civil War, the great philosophical divide is between "progressives" and "founders" of the American regime. The quarrel has come to be defined in the media as a contest between liberals and conservatives. This book explores the ideological underpinnings of American progressivism. In doing so, it examines the foundations of modern liberalism and conservatism. The fundamental problem of any science of politics is to explain, however imperfectly, the sources of justice and injustice in politics: What are the "self-evident truths" that inform and drive the public debates? Over time the foundational arguments for justice and injustice, what people regard as self-evident truths, do change. This process of change is at the heart of progressivism. The original arguments of the progressive movement are obscured or largely forgotten in contemporary political debates. But in a myriad of ways, the original progressive arguments continue to reverberate. They need to be more fully explored and understood in order to seriously engage the differences between liberals and conservatives. Such differences are not likely to be overcome simply by a study of the roots of progressivism, but it is a first step in a more rational debate, which this book will inspire.
In November 2000, when the now-infamous "butterfly ballot" confused crucial Florida voters during a hotly contested presidential race, the importance of well-designed ballots to a functioning democracy caught the nation's attention. Recognizing that our entire voting process—from registering to vote to following instructions at the polling place—can be almost as confusing as the Florida ballot, Design for Democracy builds on the lessons of 2000 by presenting innovative steps for redesigning elections in the service of citizens. Handsomely designed itself, this volume showcases adaptable design models that can improve almost every part of the election process by maximizing the clarity and usability of ballots, registration forms, posters and signs, informational brochures and guides, and even administrative materials for poll workers. Design for Democracy also lays out specific guidelines—covering issues of color palette, typography, and image use—that anchor the comprehensive election design system devised by the group of design specialists from whose name the book takes its title. Part of a major AIGA strategic program, this group's prototypes and recommendations have already been used successfully in major Illinois and Oregon elections and, collected here, are likely to spread across the country as more people become aware of the myriad benefits and broad applicability of improved election design. An essential tool for designers and election officials, lawmakers and citizens, Design for Democracy harnesses the power of design to increase voter confidence, promote government transparency, and, perhaps most important, create an informed electorate.
Since so few people appear knowledgeable about public affairs, one might question whether collective policy preferences revealed in opinion surveys accurately convey the distribution of voices and interests in a society. This study, the first comprehensive treatment of the relationship between knowledge, representation, and political equality in opinion surveys, suggests some surprising answers. Knowledge does matter, and the way it is distributed in society can cause collective preferences to reflect disproportionately the opinions of some groups more than others. Sometimes collective preferences seem to represent something like the will of the people, but frequently they do not. Sometimes they rigidly enforce political equality in the expression of political viewpoints, but often they do not. The primary culprit is not any inherent shortcoming in the methods of survey research. Rather, it is the limited degree of knowledge held by ordinary citizens about public affairs. Accounting for these factors can help survey researchers, journalists, politicians, and concerned citizens better appreciate the pitfalls and possibilities for using opinion polls to represent the people s voice.