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The Political Economy of Voting Rights Enforcement in America's Gilded Age: Electoral College Competition, Partisan Commitment, and the Federal Election Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Scott C. James  and
Brian L. Lawson
Scott C. James
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
Brian L. Lawson
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
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Abstract

We develop a model of electoral college competition and apply it to the transformation of nineteenth-century voting rights enforcement. The Federal Election Law (1872–92) was born of an effort to secure political power for southern blacks, yet it developed into an expansive machinery to police federal elections in northern cities. We argue that the Reconstruction commitment to black suffrage gradually succumbed to the competitive structure of Gilded Age presidential elections, crowded out by a growing preoccupation with registration and voter fraud in the volatile swing states that typically determined electoral college victory. More broadly, we view the electoral college as a critical force in shaping American political development. With its structured system of competition for doubtful states and pivotal groups, the electoral college injects a unique logic into the dynamics of national politics.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 93 , Issue 1 , March 1999 , pp. 115 - 131
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1999

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