Why America Stopped Voting by Mark L Kornbluh

Why America Stopped Voting by Mark L Kornbluh

Examines how giving up the vote became a fundamental aspect of modern American life Public involvement in the electoral process has all but disappeared. Not since World War I has even half the electorate cast ballots in an off-year election. Even at the presidential level, voting has plummeted dismally. Nonvoting has, over the past century, become ingrained at the heart of American politics. It was not always this way. With the integration of America's mass electorate into the electoral system in the 1830s, eligible voters were intensely participatory and remained highly mobilized throughout the nineteenth century. The turning point in American politics came during the early twentieth century when, from unmatched heights in the 1890s, voter turnouts fell repeatedly election after election. Examining mass political behavior in twenty successive national elections, Why America Stopped Voting combines political analysis with social analysis to place voter participation within the larger context of American culture and society. A milestone in the evolution of our understanding of electoral politics, Why America Stopped Voting shows that the enduring decline of voter participation has been gradual and not the direct result of particular political events. Rather, Kornbluh shows that fundamental social changes that restructured virtually every aspect of American life at the turn of the century were at the heart of the decline in voter participation that still plagues our electoral process today.

A well-written, clearly organized synthesis of the data and interpretations of participatory decline* American Historical Review *
A tremendous work of synthesis. * H-Net Reviews *

Mark Lawrence Kornbluh is Associate Professor of History at Michigan State University.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780814747087
ISBN 10	0814747086
Title	Why America Stopped Voting
Author	Mark L Kornbluh
Series	The American Social Experience
Condition	Unavailable
Publisher	New York University Press
Year published	1999-08-01
Number of pages	352
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable