Ballot Battles
The History of Disputed Elections in the United States
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Product details:
- Edition number Updated Edition
- Publisher OUP USA
- Date of Publication 10 May 2024
- ISBN 9780197775844
- Binding Paperback
- No. of pages552 pages
- Size 226x152x43 mm
- Weight 771 g
- Language English 511
Categories
Short description:
Perhaps the truest test of a nation's ability to govern itself democratically is its ability to count ballots fairly and accurately in competitive, high-stakes elections. Yet from the founding on, America's adherence to this ideal has been distinctly uneven. Edward Foley's Ballot Battles is a sweeping synthesis of the subject, tracing how election controversies evolved over time, from the 1780s to the present.
MoreLong description:
The 2000 presidential race resulted in the highest-profile ballot battle in over a century. But it is far from the only American election determined by a handful of votes and marred by claims of fraud. Since the founding of the nation, violence frequently erupted as the votes were being counted, and more than a few elections produced manifestly unfair results. Despite America's claim to be the world's greatest democracy, its adherence to the basic tenets of democratic elections-the ability to count ballots accurately and fairly even when the stakes are high-has always been shaky. A rigged gubernatorial election in New York in 1792 nearly ended in calls for another revolution, and an 1899 gubernatorial race even resulted in an assassination. Though acts of violence have decreased in frequency over the past century, fairness and accuracy in ballot counting nonetheless remains a basic problem in American political life.
In Ballot Battles, Edward Foley presents a sweeping history of election controversies in the United States, tracing how their evolution generated legal precedents that ultimately transformed how we determine who wins and who loses. While weaving a narrative spanning over two centuries, Foley repeatedly returns to an originating event: because the Founding Fathers despised parties and never envisioned the emergence of a party system, they wrote a constitution that did not provide clear solutions for high-stakes and highly-contested elections in which two parties could pool resources against one another. Moreover, in the American political system that actually developed, politicians are beholden to the parties which they represent - and elected officials have typically had an outsized say in determining the outcomes of extremely close elections that involve recounts. This underlying structural problem, more than anything else, explains why intense ballot battles that leave one side feeling aggrieved will continue to occur for the foreseeable future.
American democracy has improved dramatically over the last two centuries. But the same cannot be said for the ways in which we determine who wins the very close races. From the founding until today, there has been little progress toward fixing the problem. Indeed, supporters of John Jay in 1792 and opponents of Lyndon Johnson in the 1948 Texas Senate race would find it easy to commiserate with Al Gore after the 2000 election. Ballot Battles is not only the first full chronicle of contested elections in the US. It also provides a powerful explanation of why the American election system has been-and remains-so ineffective at deciding the tightest races in a way that all sides will agree is fair.
The vitality of democracy depends on honest elections and a fair count of the ballots. Yet as Edward Foley demonstrates in this eye-opening study, many close elections at all levels of American government since 1792 have resulted in contested outcomes that violated one or both of these requirements. With no standard mechanism in place to determine fairly the winner of disputed elections, the instability and bitterness that has marked past elections will likely persist into the future, he predicts, unless we can come up with an accepted means of arbitrating disputed results."-James McPherson, George Henry Davis 1886 Professor of American History (Emeritus), Princeton University, and author of Battle Cry of Freedom
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments
Preface to the Revised Edition
Prologue: The Missing Institution of Impartiality
Introduction: Understanding the Past for the Sake of the Future
Chapter One: Uncertain Vote-Counting in the Founding Era
Chapter Two: The Novelty of Chief Executive Elections
Chapter Three: The Entrenchment of Two-Party Competition
Chapter Four: Counting Votes at Times of Crisis
Chapter Five: Hayes-Tilden: To the Edge of the Constitutional Cliff
Chapter Six: The Gilded Age: An Era of Hypercompetitive Elections
Chapter Seven: The Progressive Era: Missed Opportunities at a Time of Reform
Chapter Eight: America in the Middle of its Century: A Tarnished Ideal
Chapter Nine: The Sixties and Their Legacy: The Rise of Democratic Expectations
Chapter Ten: The Eighties and Nineties: Reemergence of Intensified Partisanship
Chapter Eleven: Florida 2000: Avoiding a Return to the Constitutional Brink
Chapter Twelve: After Bush v. Gore: Reinvigorated Demand for Electoral Fairness
Chapter Thirteen: Donald Trump and the Advent of Election Denialism
Conclusion: The Enduring Quest for a Fair Count
Appendix
