Agenda

• Today: Voting and Elections

• Next class: Political Parties

    - Homework start (50% by class time): Chapter 05 Political Parties - Begin by February 24

Announcemnts

Campaigns and Elections

Who runs elections in the United States

• State and local governments

• Federal government sets some rules

    - Centered on 14th Amendment
    - Voting Rights Act
    - Help America Vote Act

• Parties also play a role in primary elections, caucuses, and conventions

Types of electoral rules (voting systems)

• Plurality system

    - First-past-the-post system
    - Winner-take-all system
    - Common in the United States
    - The winner take all aspect accounts for the dominance of two major parties
    - If there are a dozen closely matched candidates, the winner may only get 20% of the vote

• Majority system: candidate must win 50% + 1 vote

• Runoff election: if no candidate wins majority, top two candidates face off in a second election

• Ranked choice voting / instant runoff voting

    - voters rank candidates in order of preference
    - Uncommon now but used in the past in some major cities
    - Now used in Maine and Alaska for federal elections

Types of Elections

• Primary elections
• General elections
• Special elections

Types of Elections: Primaries

• Usually set by state law along with party rules
• Parties are private organizations
• Parties have freedom of association
• Party rules are not subject to judicial review

Types of Elections: Primary elections

• Select the parties nominees for the general election
• Closed primary
• Open primary
• Blanket primary
• Jungle primary / Top two primary / Louisiana primary
• Caucus

Types of Elections: General elections

• Select officeholders
• Most use plurality system
• Some use majority system or runoff elections
• Maine and Alaska use ranked choice voting

Types of Elections: Special elections and other elections

• Fill vacancies
• Recall elections
• Ballot initiatives
• Referendums

Party conventions

• Held every four years

• Delegates are elected in the state primaries and caucuses

    - Delegates are pledged to support a candidate
    - Delegates select the party’s nominee for president
    - Delegates also draft the party platform
    - Usually a formality
    - In the past, conventions were more important

• Rules set by party National Committees

Democratic Convention Rules

• Superdelegate

    - party leader or elected official who is automatically a delegate
    - not pledged to support a candidate
    - can vote for any candidate
    -  out of total delegates       

• 2020:

    - 771 superdelegates
    - 3,979 pledged delegates
    - 4,750 total delegates

• Superdelegates helped Independent Bernie Sanders in 2016

Republican Convention Rules

• Superdelegates are not used in the Republican Party
• Former Democrat and Reform Party Member Donald Trump won the Republican nomination in 2016

Presidential General Election

Electoral College

    - Indirect election
    - Candidate names are on the ballot
    - We elected Electors pledged to those candidates
    - Electors meet in December to cast their votes
    - Congress counts the Electoral College votes in January
    

• Indirect election of the chief executive is not unique to the United States

    - The Electoral College is unique to the United States
    - Most democracies are parliamentary systems where the chief executive is chosen by the legislature
    - The Electoral College is a compromise between direct election and election by the legislature
    - Preserves federalism and the power of the states
    - Preserves the Separation of Powers (Congress role is extremely limited)

Election campaigns

• Campaigns are long and expensive

• Campaigns are run by professional staff

• Campaigns are media-driven

• Expensive campaigns favor incumbents over challengers

    - incumbents: current officeholders
    - challengers: candidates running against incumbents

• Incumbents have name recognition and a record to run on

• Incumbents have access to campaign funds from PACs and other sources

Federal Election Campaign finncing

• Campaign Finance Legal Framework

    - Goes back to 1867
    - Federal Election Campaign Act (1971)
    - Federal Election Commission (1974)
    - Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (2002)

• Free speech issues

    - Citizens United v. FEC (2010)
    - McCutcheon v. FEC (2014)

• Campaign finance entities

    - Campaign committees
    - Political Action Committees (PACs)
    - Super PACs
    - 501(c)(4) committees (IRS designation for a type of nonprofit social welfare organization)

State general elections in Texas

• Decided by a plurality vote
• Held every other year on the same day as national elections
• Turnout is highest in presidential election years

Texas Ballots

• Texas ballots are in English and Spanish
• Harris and Tarrant counties have ballots also in Vietnamese.
• Straight ticket voting is no longer an option, you must vote for each office individually
• Texas adopted the Australian Ballot or secret ballot in 1892

Voting in Texas

• To qualify to vote, you must be:

    - 18-years-old or older
    - U.S. citizen
    - Resident of the state of Texas
    - 

• To register to vote, you must:

    - Register in person or by mail at least 30 days before an election
    - At least 17 years and 10 months old on the date your voter registration application is submitted, and 18 years of age on Election Day.
    - resident of the county where you submit the application
    -  not a convicted felon (you may be eligible to vote if you have completed your sentence, probation, and parole)
    -  not been declared by a court exercising probate jurisdiction to be either totally mentally incapacitated or partially mentally incapacitated without the right to vote.
    - Qualified to vote

Voting in Texas

• Vote on Election Day or during early voting

Find your polling place, election dates, early election periods, registration information, sample ballots, official election results

• Texas - Texas Secretary of State - Vote Texas!
• Harris County - Harris Votes

Authorship and License

• Author: Tom Hanna

• Website: tomhanna.me

• License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.