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The Uses and Abuses of Registration and Turnout Data: An Analysis of Piven and Cloward's Studies of Nonvoting in America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Stephen Earl Bennett
Stephen Earl Bennett*
Affiliation:
University of Cincinnati
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Extract

A large corpus exists detailing the reasons for low turnout in American elections. It is not surprising that scholars disagree over the factors responsible. What should concern us is the extent to which single-factor explanations lead to serious misunderstanding of this phenomenon.

Piven and Cloward recently continued their crusade to relax registration statutes (1989: see also 1988a, 1988b). They contend that the most important causes of low turnout are “legal-institutional” features of American politics, especially personal registration laws. They assert that American turnout is lower than in most western democracies and what it had been in this country during the late-nineteenth century because registration laws keep many people, particularly those in the lower social orders, from voting. Eliminate registration, or shift the burden from individual to government, and the low turnout problem will be solved, so Piven and Cloward argue.

Type
Research Article
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , June 1990 , pp. 166 - 171
Copyright
Copyright © The American Political Science Association 1990

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