Party Ballots, Reform, and the Transformation of America's Electoral System

Abstract

This book explores the fascinating and puzzling world of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American elections. It examines the strategic behavior of nineteenth-century party politicians and shows how their search for electoral victory led them to invent a number of remarkable campaign practices. Why were parties dedicated to massive voter mobilization? Why did presidential nominees wage front-porch campaigns? Why did officeholders across the country tie their electoral fortunes to the popularity of presidential candidates at the top of the ticket? Erik J. Engstrom and Samuel Kernell demonstrate that the defining features of nineteenth-century electoral politics were the product of institutions in the states that prescribed how votes were cast and how those votes were converted into political offices. Relying on a century's worth of original data, this book uncovers the forces propelling the nineteenth-century electoral system, its transformation at the end of the nineteenth century, and the implications of that transformation for modern American politics.

Congressional Candidates in the Era of Party Ballots

“…How do we reconcile these findings with work by Engstrom and Kernell (2005Kernell ( , 2014, which suggests that the use of the party ticket made the attributes of individual congressional candidates largely irrelevant? We believe the answer to this question lies in the unique individual-level variation in the structure of nineteenth-century elections.…”

“…28 Indeed, since the fate of all members of the party was tied together by the structure of the ballot, we believe it would be useful to examine questions related to the interaction between a broader set of elections. While Engstrom and Kernell (2014) focus on the extent to which presidential elections nationalized state and local elections, it also would be beneficial to examine whether congressional candidates could produce similar coattails effects. Both midterm elections and nonuniform election timing meant that there were numerous elections for which congressional candidates, and not presidential or gubernatorial candidates, were at the top of the party ticket.…”

“…Others claim that voters during this period evaluated candidates almost entirely on the basis of party affiliation rather than experience or legislative actions (Skeen 1986) and generally did not hold public officials accountable for their behavior in office (Formisano 1974;Swift 1987). 2 The arguments for a more limited role for individual congressional candidates during this period is buttressed by research suggesting that the party ballot manufactured greater levels of voter responsiveness to the parties (Engstrom and Kernell 2005Kernell , 2014. Since the party ballot made split ticket voting difficult, if not impossible, voters were not selecting between different candidates as much as they were between different political parties (Rusk 1970).…”

Illicit Tactics as Substitutes

“…Kleppner and Baker (1980) claim to have collected these data at the county level for non-Southern states, but we have failed to find any trace of that data. We have also cross-checked their coding (Fredman, 1968;Ludington, 1911) and corrected two mistakes (in Kentucky and Wisconsin); our years of adoption for non-Southern states then perfectly match those of Engstrom and Kernell (2014). The delimitation of the time period was designed to capture the majority of contested election cases in the history of U.S. elections (see the section "Assessing the Effects of Ballot Reform on Election Fraud").…”

“…Although a large body of research dating to Burnham's (1965) seminal study has gauged the effects of these changes on outcomes such as voter turnout (Dugan & Taggart, 1995;Heckelman, 1995Heckelman, , 2000, split-ticket voting (Engstrom & Kernell, 2014;Rusk, 1970), and the size of government (G. Anderson & Tollison, 1990;Lott & Kenny, 1999), ours is to the best of our knowledge the first to directly assess their impact on practices of election fraud across all states. 2 To accomplish this, we draw on a novel measure of election fraud based on charges of electoral misconduct filed with political authorities (Lehoucq, 2003).…”