University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 1-1-2005 American voting : the local character of suffrage in the United States. Alec C. Ewald University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1 Recommended Citation Ewald, Alec C., "American voting : the local character of suffrage in the United States." (2005). Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014. 2389. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1/2389 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. AMERICAN VOTING: THE LOCAL CHARACTER OF SUFFRAGE IN THE UNITED STATES A Dissertation Presented by ALEC C. EWALD Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY February 2005 Department of Political Science © Copyright by Alec C. Ewald 2005 All Rights Reserved AMERICAN VOTING: THE LOCAL CHARACTER OF SUFFRAGE IN THE UNITED STATES A Dissertation Presented by ALEC C. EWALD Department of Political Science DEDICATION To my parents, Gaelen and Richard Ewald, for teaching me to read and to love books. “All the truth lies in the details.” Stendhal, quoted in William J. Novak, The People ’s Welfare: Law and Regulation in Nineteenth-Century> America (1996), at 235. “Yet the texts of the law must be made socially real: enacted, implemented, imposed.” Sally Engle Merry, Colonizing Hawa 'i: The Cultural Power ofLaw (2000), at 218. “The right to vote is protected in more than the initial allocation of the franchise. Equal protection applies as well to the manner of its exercise.” v. Bush Gore , 531 U.S. 98, 104 (2000). “The way they guarded that ballot box, they let us know there was something mighty good in voting.” Charles Evers, describing his exclusion from the registrar’s office in Decatur, Mississippi in 1946. Quoted in Steven F. Lawson, Black Ballots: Voting Rights in 1944-1969 at x. the South, , ACKNOWLEDGMENTS There is a convention of thanking one’s spouse or partner last, presumably for dramatic purpose. I would prefer to remove any doubt that my first and last debt is to my wife Emily, who has supported me in every way imaginable as I have worked on this project. Thank you. I am deeply indebted to John Brigham, who for four years has been showing me how to think closely and creatively about the law. John’s mix of sharp criticism and enthusiastic support has been all that I could have wanted in an advisor and dissertation chair. Shelly Goldman has also served as a mentor and model of scholarship over the past four years; I wish Ray LaRaja had arrived at Massachusetts a year or so earlier, so that I could have learned even more from him than I’ve been able to in the last two years. Many thanks to Betsy Krause of the Anthropology Department, who agreed to work on the project and provided some extremely useful questions and suggestions at an important early point. This committee made the dissertation far more enjoyable than I had hoped it could be. Among the Political Science faculty at the University of Massachusetts, particular thanks to Jerry Mileur, Laura Jensen, Jeff Sedgwick, M.J. Peterson, Dean Robinson, and Barbara Cruikshank. The Department staff made things easy along the way, particularly Donna Dove and Barb Ciesluk. Among my graduate-student colleagues, I would like to thank Lonce Sandy-Bailey, David Clabom, Laura Hatcher, George Thomas, Patrick Campbell, Keith Forrest, and Paul Adams for companionship and motivation. Many, vi many thanks to Barbara Morgan and the other staff of the W.E.B DuBois Library, particularly the anonymous geniuses who run the Inter-Library Loan system. I have been particularly fortunate to receive advice on this and other projects from “non-academics,” among whom Marc Mauer of the Sentencing Project, David Callahan of Demos, and Peter Wagner of the Prison Policy Initiative deserve to be singled out. The Sentencing Project has supported part of this research financially, and all three organizations do superb research-based advocacy. The Brennan Center is part academic institution and part advocacy think-tank; thanks to Jessie Allen, Deborah Goldberg, and the Center for encouragement and inspiration. Listing important personal allies in a project like this is dangerous because important people inevitably will be forgotten. Nonetheless, for inspiration and support particular thanks go to Alyson Ewald, Ian Finseth, Avital Rosenberg, Gwenn Miller, Rich Robinson, Jeff Brown, Adam Schiffer, Dustin Howes, Greg Pettis, Simon Holzapfel, Amy Holzapfel, Doug Jankey, John Roberts, Debbie Mintz, and Joey Chemila. Special thanks to Steve Snyder, for helping me find light places to work during the dark winters, and to Mari Enoch, for her hectoring encouragement in the final months. I would also like mountaineering survival tale Touching the Void to thank Joe Simpson, author of the , for his explanation of how to break a frighteningly gigantic task into its smallest pieces. For musical accompaniment, thanks to Ludwig, Johann, Cannonball, and Bela, among many others. My grandfather, George Ewald, died as I worked towards completing this project. His interest in politics and support gave me the strength to go out and do what needed to love and be done. I have also been sustained for as long as I can remember by the vii encouragement of my grandmothers, Patricia Ewald and Sue Coffin. These are debts that cannot be repaid. This dissertation is dedicated to my parents, Gaelen and Richard Ewald, in gratitude for their having taught me to read and to like books. viii ABSTRACT AMERICAN VOTING: THE LOCAL CHARACTER OF SUFFRAGE IN THE UNITED STATES FEBRUARY 2005 ALEC C. EWALD, B.A., TUFTS UNIVERSITY M.A., UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA - CHAPEL HILL Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor John Brigham This dissertation examines the local dimension of suffrage in the United States. The U.S. has a hyper-federalized system of election administration, in which county and municipal officials and institutions continue to play important roles, and I demonstrate that a systematic analysis and appreciation of these suffrage practices enhances our understanding of voting rights and American political development. The dissertation makes theoretical, historical, and normative contributions to our ideas about American voting. First, I argue that conceiving suffrage as a practice, rather than merely a formal right or an instrumental behavior, produces a more rich understanding of what Americans actually do at the polls. Historically, I show that prominent roles for local officials and a great deal of variation in voting practices at the county or municipal level have always been components of American suffrage. Such variation - which is today often treated as a scandal or, at best, an historical accident to be rectified - is in important ways a product of purposeful state action, and is closely connected to American ideas about popular local sovereignty and the state. Normatively, I emphasize the redemptive aspects of the today character of American suffrage, challenging what seems to be the prevailing bias IX against things local. I contend not only that local administration of elections is deeply rooted in U.S. history and thought, but also that local administration has at times been an important engine of inclusion, expanding the bounds of suffrage before state and federal law did so. Americans have always voted together in our communities, and have done so for reasons rooted in our fundamental political traditions. x 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vi ABSTRACT CHAPTER 1. VOTING RIGHTS AS SUFFRAGE PRACTICES: THE REDISCOVERY OF PSEPHOLOGY { I The Local Role in Contemporary American Elections 5 II. The Rediscovery of Psephology and the Lessons of 2000 1 III. How We Got Here: Dominant Approaches to Suffrage Before Bush v. Gore 28 IV. Suffrage as a Practice 40 2. THE LOCAL DIMENSION OF AMERICAN VOTING: A BRIEF HISTORY 48 I. Colonial America 52 II. The Early National Period 61 III. Reconstruction and the Late Nineteenth Century 77 IV. The Early Twentieth Century 92 V. The Voting Rights Act Era (and Beyond) 100 3. “DOG TAGS AND DUMP STICKERS:” AMERICAN VOTING, THE STATE, AND THE PRACTICE OF POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY 106 I. “Please come out.” 107 II. Sovereignty Made Real: Suffrage, Sovereignty, and American Voting 115 III. From Dread, Weakness? American State Development and the Perils of the Local Dimension of American Suffrage 124 IV. The Case for Things Local: Madison, Tocqueville, and Contemporary Advocates 132 4. THE CONSTRUCTION OF AMERICAN SUFFRAGE: VOTING PRACTICES IN THE JACKSONIAN CONVENTIONS AND THE AUSTRALIAN-BALLOT ERA 147 I. “The Remaining Record of This Experiment:” The Jacksonian Conventions 149 II. “A Closet of Prayer:” The Australian Ballot and the Trans formation of American Suffrage 176 xi 5. “ANYTHING WITH THE APPEARANCE OF A MAN:” INCLUSION, EXCLUSION, AND LOCAL ADMINISTRATION OF U.S. ELECTIONS 193 L “Implicit messages are no less significant:” Institutional Practices as Components of Democratic Exclusion 196 II. Two Lows for Localism? The Post-Reconstruction Backlash Against Universal Suffrage and The Reforms of the Progressive Era 207 III. “Even Servants, Negroes, Aliens, Jews, and Common Sailors Were Admitted to Vote:” The Inclusive Tradition in American Election Administration 226 IV. Suffrage Qualifications: Law and Practice 243 6. CONVICTS AND COUNTY CLERKS: THE LOCAL DIMENSION OF AMERICAN CRIMINAL DISENFRANCHISEMENT 245 I. “I Have No Desire to Move Forward Quickly:” Florida and the Inclusive Potential of Local Administration of Disenfranchisement Law 251 II. Private Voting, Public Punishment: The Practice of Disenfranchisement in American History 257 III.