5.1  Voting Rights  and Models of  Voting Behavior

Factors associated with political ideology, efficacy, structural barriers, and demographics influence the nature and degree of political participation. 

Describe the voting rights protections in the Constitution and in legislation. 

Describe different models of voting behavior. 

Legal protections found in federal legislation and the Fifteenth, Seventeenth, Nineteenth, Twenty-Fourth, and Twenty-Sixth Amendments relate to the expansion of opportunities for political participation. 

Examples of political models explaining voting behavior include: 

•  Rational choice—Voting based on what is perceived to be in the citizen’s individual interest In this model, voting is portrayed as a rational act that is undertaken on a strictly individual basis. Individual voters are therefore believed to decide their party preference on the basis of personal self-interest. This is instrumental voting’, in that voting is seen as an instrumental act, a means to an end. In that sense, voters behave very much like consumers, the only difference being that instead of choosing between the goods and services on offer, they choose between the policy options available. By emphasising the importance of policies, this model stresses the importance of what is called issue voting, and suggests that parties can significantly influence their electoral performance by revising or reshaping the policies they advance. 

•  Retrospective voting—Voting to decide whether the party or candidate in power should be reelected based on the recent past 

•  Prospective voting—Voting based on predictions of how a party or candidate will perform in the future 

•  Party-line voting—Supporting a party by voting for candidates from one political party for all public offices at the same level of government. Citizens also use party identification to make decisions via straight-ticket voting—choosing every Republican or Democratic Party member on the ballot. In some states, such as Texas or Michigan, selecting one box at the top of the ballot gives a single party all the votes on the ballot (Figure 7.19). Straight-ticket voting does cause problems in states that include non-partisan positions on the ballot. In Michigan, for example, the top of the ballot (presidential, gubernatorial, senatorial and representative seats) will be partisan, and a straight-ticket vote will give a vote to all the candidates in the selected party. But the middle or bottom of the ballot includes seats for local offices or judicial seats, which are non-partisan. These offices would receive no vote, because the straight-ticket votes go only to partisan seats. 

• split-ticket voting  

U.S. election laws date back to Article 1 of the Constitution. This gave states the responsibility of overseeing federal elections. Many constitutional amendments and federal laws protecting voting rights have been passed since then.

• The 15th Amendment gave African American men the right to vote in 1870. But many weren't able to exercise this right. Some states used literacy tests and other barriers to make it harder to vote.

• The 17th Amendment

• The 19th Amendment, ratified in 1920, gave American women the right to vote.

• The 24th Amendment, ratified in 1964, eliminated poll taxes. The tax had been used in some states to keep African Americans from voting in federal elections.

• The 26th Amendment, ratified in 1971, lowered the voting age for all elections to 18.