Land of the Free,Home of the Brave: Voting Accommodations for Older Adults

Voting is a fundamental right for all United States citizens, one that usually continues for elderly people as long as they are alive. As adults age, certain issues regarding voting warrant deeper consideration than in previous years, especially those presenting as a result of impaired sight, hearing difficulty, dementia, or other special needs. What will happen to millions of men and women who have taken the right to vote for granted, but who gradually become immobile or physically impaired? What are states doing to help secure the enfranchisement of an increasing number of older adult voters? The purpose of this article is to address these issues by focusing on the following questions: What has been the historical nature of polling place accommodations for elderly people? What are states doing in terms of accommodating older voters at the polls while ensuring the integrity of the voting process? What effect has recent Help America Vote Act legislation had with regard to polling place accommodations? Our results indicate that accommodations for older voters are being made but are not yet at a level required to serve a rapidly aging population.     

Observations on the 1994 Mexican National Elections

On January 1, 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect. Over a period of fifteen years NAFTA will eliminate trade barriers between Mexico, Canada, and the United States. As the economics and politics of the three countries become increasingly interdependent, it is important for social workers in the United States to become better informed about developments in Mexico and Canada which affect the welfare of Mexicans and Canadians and which have implications for social welfare policy and programming in the United States. This report, by a ''United Statesian''1 social worker who participated in the efforts of Alianza Cívica/Observatión '94 to monitor the 1994 Mexican national elections, describes the political context of those elections; the training and credentialing of an ''international visitor;'' election day activities in Tecalapa, Guerrero; and the author's reflections on the electoral process and subsequent events in Mexico.     

NEW DOMAINS FOR STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS

Can network thinking be extended to the broad range of social organization conventionally studies by sociologists? Applying structural thinking to American election data, it is possible to detect a social-economic hierarchy solely from the links among categories, without reference to external numerical indicators of rank. It is possible to detect and verify sensible and suggestive relative social positions for categories of income, education, gender, age, religion, race, party identification, and region – forming correlated hierarchies. The special contribution of the structural analysis is its simultaneous attention to detail and the overview of links, coupled with less dependence on a priori assumptions.     

Contending with the “Double Handicap”

SUMMARY

This article explores the impact of a quarter century of gender politics in presidential elections in the United States stressing the dual importance of differences between men and women, the gender gap, and women as a political force as they have come not only to exceed men in their voting numbers but also in their turnout rate. It reviews the way women's votes have affected presidential campaigns, drawing attention to the effect women's and men's votes have had on the Electoral College which is what counts in presidential elections. It raises the important question of what impact the attention to women voters has had on the public policies of administrations between elections.     

Voting to belong: the inevitability of systemic Islamophobia

In this article, I connect Muslim American voting practices to the ‘good Muslim’ trope. Tracing participation of members of Islamic Representative Organizations (IRO’s) in election cycles from 2000 to 2016, I argue that elections have been a site for Muslim Americans to negotiate a sense of belonging in the U.S. My research reveals deep cynicism about the transformative potential of elections and a sense that systemic Islamophobia (i.e. militarism and surveillance) were perceived as inevitable. IRO members opted instead to vote as a way to articulate the presence of Muslims in the U.S.; for instance, Muslims ought to ‘make a statement’ by voting against Donald Trump or for the first woman candidate. In this way, voting can be understood as an articulation of a ‘good Muslim’ subjectivity through which IRO members seek legitimacy within, rather than a dismantling of, an Islamophobic milieu.     

Signaling and Election Motivations in a Voting Model with Common Values and Responsive Candidates

In this paper we focus on strategic voting behavior when both an election and a signaling motivation affect voters' behavior. We analyze a model of elections with two candidates competing on a one‐dimensional policy space. Voters are privately and imperfectly informed about a common shock affecting the electorate's preferences. Candidates are assumed to choose policy in response to information gleaned from election results and according to exogenous factors that may lead to polarization in candidates' policy choices. We analyze a subset of symmetric equilibria in which strategies are symmetric to candidates' names and private signals (CSS equilibria). We show that signaling and election motivations pull voters to vote in different directions. We provide conditions that show the relation between the amount of information aggregated in the election and the motivation that influences voting behavior the most. Finally, we show that when candidates are responsive and polarized, all CSS equilibria are inefficient in the limit.     

The Undeserving Rich: “Moral Values” and the White Working Class1

White working‐class citizens who vote for the Republican Party have been fodder for much political discussion and speculation recently, and a debate has arisen about the role that “moral values” played in the political decision making of this segment of voters. In this article, we defend a version of the moral values claim. We show that although the Republicans’ policies are unpopular, they are bundled with an overarching moral framework that is extremely resonant to this set of voters, and we use in‐depth interviews to uncover this framework. A key feature of this framework, on which in the 2004 presidential election George W. Bush scored high and John Kerry scored low, is the appropriate attitude to wealth, which serves as an indicator for a candidate’s general moral philosophy and as a heuristic about whether the candidate will govern with working‐class voters’ interests in mind. National Election Studies data support the argument that this was a key influence on the voting decision in 2004, even controlling for voters’ partisan identification.     

Correlates of Voting Participation of People with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

ABSTRACT

People with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) vote less frequently than nondisabled people and people with other disabilities. This study explores what factors facilitate and hinder people with IDD’s voting participation. To do so, 1,341 people with IDD were surveyed using the Personal Outcome Measures®. Binary logistic regressions revealed significant relationships between voting participation, and support needs, residence types, guardianship statuses, and organizational supports. Along with the right supports, attention to barriers that might exist can ensure people with IDD are able to make use of their civil rights and participate in this crucial form of civic engagement.     

Dialogue and transparency: A content analysis of how the 2012 presidential candidates used twitter

This study conducted a content analysis of the Twitter pages of the 2012 presidential candidates to determine how they were using Twitter, if they were engaging in meaningful dialogue with their followers, and if they were being transparent. Tweets from February 1, 2012 through February 29, 2012 were coded. Overall, the candidates tweeted most about the economy, events, and specific primaries but failed to created meaningful dialogue with their followers. Some candidates were more transparent than others in regards to who was responsible for tweeting.     

Elder Participation and Senior Power in Australian Electoral Politics

This article seeks to assess the “goodness of fit” between the social science literature on the impact of older voters on electoral outcomes and the Australian experience of the politics of aging. While the literature suggests that the notion of senior power is a flawed one, Australia's 2004 federal election campaign indicated that this is not quite so. This article offers a possible explanation for the difference between the literature and the Australian experience in terms of the calculus that underpinned the election campaign, namely, capturing the votes of swing voters in marginal seats including “silver” swing voters in seats with a disproportionate number of older voters. The preliminary findings of a small exploratory study of campaign strategists suggest that there may be a real basis to this explanation. Thus, there does appear to be some basis for asserting that “gray power” does play a role in Australian national electoral politics.