GOV 120 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Electoral College, Mass Mobilization, Direct Democracy
Document Summary
Barriers to voting and their impact on minorities. Decentralization of authority to (untrained) local officials. Reduced early voting and number of polling places. Ids are prevalent, so no cost to remedy a potentially serious problem. Little (no) evidence of voting fraud, so a remedy in search of a problem. Not having ids disproportionately occurs among elderly, urban populations, and minorities. Voting clerks may not be trained to evaluate ids, so the risk of disenfranchisement over documents. Request for id is potentially intimidating to new voters. Interest of minority communities and identifying how these barriers affect the disproportionate participation. To challenge new restrictions and remove existing restrictions at the level in which they are implemented. You need people complaining that their electoral rights are being challenged and that is fundamentally anti-democratic. Barriers more likely to appear in unorganized communities. Issues can create an incentive to mobilization.
