Voting Reform in America's South

Paper Summary:

Voting reform in America's South has been undertaken with great seriousness over the past two decades. Many changes had been made in the years prior to that and efforts continued because blacks were still disenfranchised to a great degree, with a number of laws and practices remaining that mitigated against the black vote. The paper shows that in the last 15 years or so, efforts to increase the black vote in the South increased, along with efforts to martial that vote to elect more black representatives, with some success. The paper examines how these efforts have made considerable change, but they have not completely overcome the traditional imbalance between black and white voters nor the tendency toward non-voting common in the South and becoming more common all over the United States. The paper looks at voting laws, demographic movement and includes a table.

From the Paper:

"The states in the South are primarily responsible for the low voter turnout rates, for they continually rank at or near the bottom of turnout rankings. Southern voters are influenced dramatically by various demographics which tend to lead to nonvoting, such as low incomes and low education rates. In addition, race plays a greater role in the South than in any other part of the country. As the South tries desperately to improve its economic and social conditions, voting will play a major role. Nonvoting seems to show a general disinterest in the political situation, and if minorities do not improve their voting record, one result will be that less attention is paid to the many problems of the many poor and minorities in the South. Past studies have documented that voter turnout rates are relatively lower for the South when compared to the rest of the nation, a pattern that is not due to any type of cultural difference that exists between the South and the rest of the nation but rather to demographic factors such as education, income, religion, and race (Joyce, 1998)."

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