Suffrage

Definitions: 

- Britannica: 

suffrage, in representative government, the right to vote in electing public officials and adopting or rejecting proposed legislation. The history of the suffrage, or franchise, is one of gradual extension from limited, privileged groups in society to the entire adult population. Nearly all modern governments have provided for universal adult suffrage. It is regarded as more than a privilege extended by the state to its citizenry, and it is rather thought of as an inalienable right that inheres to every adult citizen by virtue of citizenship.

- Wikipedia: 

Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise is the right to vote in public, political elections and referendums (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote). In some languages, and occasionally in English, the right to vote is called active suffrage, as distinct from passive suffrage, which is the right to stand for election. The combination of active and passive suffrage is sometimes called full suffrage.

In most democracies, eligible voters can vote in elections for representatives. Voting on issues by referendum may also be available.

The Right to Vote.

- Voting in Early America. 

Is there an explicit  right to vote in the U.S. Constitution? No

Enfranchisement / Disenfranchisement.

- Religious Tests for Office and Voting in the States – Revolution to Constitution.

- Property ownership.

Constitutional Rules: 

- Article 1, Section 2, Clause 2, U.S. Constitution
- Article 7 Texas Constitution
- 14th Amendment
- equal protection clause
- 15th Amendment
- 19th Amendment
- 22nd Amendment
- 24th Amendment
- 26th Amendment

Access to the Polls

- Vote Suppression.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965.

U.S. Code: TITLE 52—VOTING AND ELECTIONS - Subtitle I—Voting Rights

Shelby County v Holder.

Who does vote? 

Voter turnout

Terms: 

suffrage
right to vote
limits on suffrage
Article 1, Section 2, Clause 2, U.S. Constitution
Article 7 Texas Constitution
who decides who votes?
Jacksonian Democracy
property requirements
democratization
14th Amendment
equal protection clause
15th Amendment
19th Amendment
22nd Amendment
24th Amendment
26th Amendment
grandfather clause
literacy test
poll tax
white primary
Voting Rights Act

Court Cases

Crawford v Marion County Board of Election
Shelby County v Holder
Carrington v Rash 

Section Six - Suffrage, Elections, Campaigns, etc . . .

In this section we dig further into elections -  the mechanism that is used to tie the people with the government. 

In addition to the mechanics of he electoral process, this involves questions involving who gets to participate, who runs elections, who is allowed to run for office, and how they campaign for office. 

These can be divided into the following topics: 

1 - Suffrage 
2 - Elections 
3 - Voting 
4 - Voter Suppression
5 - Candidates 
6 - Campaigns 
7 - Campaign Consultants
7 - Campaign Finance
8 - The Donor Class

These can be defined as follows: 

1 - Suffrage: "Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise is the right to vote in public, political elections and referendums (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote)."
 
2 - Elections: the formal process of selecting a person for public office or of accepting or rejecting a political proposition by voting.
 
3 - Voting:  a method by which a group, such as a meeting or an electorate, convenes together for the purpose of making a collective decision or expressing an opinion usually following discussions, debates or election campaigns.

4 - Voter Suppression: any legal or extralegal measure or strategy whose purpose or practical effect is to reduce voting, or registering to vote, by members of a targeted racial group, political party, or religious community.

5 - Candidate: A candidate is someone who is being considered for a position, for example someone who is running in an election or applying for a job.

6 - Campaign: an organized effort which seeks to influence the decision making progress within a specific group. In democracies, political campaigns often refer to electoral campaigns, by which representatives are chosen or referendums are decided.

7 - Campaign Consultants: 

8 - Campaign Finance: . . . the funds raised to promote candidates, political parties, or policy initiatives and referendums. Donors and recipients include individuals, corporations, political parties, and charitable organizations.

8 - The Donor Class: . . . a group of individuals or organizations that contribute significant amounts of money to political campaigns or causes. These donors often wield influence over political decision-making processes due to their financial contributions, which can fund advertising, lobbying efforts, and other activities that promote their interests or preferred policies.

Lectures: 

- U.S. Election Code.
- Texas Election Code.
- Is Voting a Right Guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution?
- Information, Disinformation, and Misinformation.
- Suffrage.
- Political Parties and Party Systems.
- Political Eras / Party Systems of the United States.
- Campaign Finance.
- Types of voter suppression.


Terminology

Elections
- elections
- regular elections
- voting
- adverse selection
- moral hazard
- institutions
- election rules
- suffrage
- participation rates
- who votes
- voter turnout
- nonvoters
- the franchise
- voter registration
- the ballot
- the secret ballot
- indirect democracy
- electoral districts
- single members districts
- electoral college
- majority rule
- minority rights
- redistricting
- fairness
- bias
- plurality
- proportional representation
- two party system
- winner take all 
- direct democracy
- referendum
- initiative
- recall
- party loyalty
- issue voting
- prospective voting
- retrospective voting
- spatial issues
- valence issues
- median voter theorem
- candidate characteristics
- campaigns
- campaign finance
- FECA
- media
- winning
- PACs
- Super PACs
- primaries
- general elections
- at large
- closed primary
- disenfranchisement
- early voting
- 15th Amendment
- get out the vote
- incumbents
- microtargeting
- motor voter law
- name recognition 
- negative campaigning
- open primary
- PACs
- Super PACs
- political efficacy
- political socialization
- poll tax
- primary election
- public opinion polling
- partisan election
- non-partisan election
- register
- runoff election
- single-member districts
- special election
- split ticket voting
- straight ticket voting
- Voting Rights Act

GOVT 2306
Assemblies
Parties in the Early Congress
Washington's warnings
Advantages of political parties
Expansion of suffrage
Democrats and the development of Texas
Rise of Republicanism
- business regulation
- civil rights
State parties
Local parties



Terminology

GOVT 2305: WTP - Chapter 8: Campaigns and Elections
advanced or early voting
blanket or wide-open primary
casework
closed primary
credit claiming
cross-filing 
direct primary
disclosure
equal protection clause
general election
grandfather clause
incumbent
independent candidate
literacy test
majority election
Motor Voter Act
open primary
party-line voting
party primary
plurality election
poll tax
position taking
preference primary
primary election
private financing
public financing
roll off
runoff election
second-order elections
suffrage 
voter turnout 
Voting Rights Act of 1965
white primary 

GOVT 2306: LSP - Chapter 9: Political Parties
allocation 
chronic minority
conventions (caucuses) 
county chair 
county or senatorial district convention 
electoral competition model 
executive committee 
grassroots organization 
party machines 
party platform
patronage 
permanent party organizations 
plank 
political party 
precinct chair 
responsible party model 
runoff primary 
state party chair 
straight-ticket voting 
temporary party organizations 

__________

Fall 2022

- What are parties and interest groups? 
- Contract allowing the formation of the Virginia Company
- Elite politics
- Interests highlighted in Federalist #10
- Territorial Expansion
- Free rider problem
- Tragedy of the commons 
- Public and private interests
- Federalists and Democrat - Republicans
- Party eras
- Contemporary politics
- The Powell Memo

Week Five - The Political Institutions

The Political Institutions

1 - What is a Political Institution? 
2 - Suffrage
3 - Elections
4 - Groups and Interests
5 - Political Parties
6 - The Press

The Political Institutions

1 - What is a political institution? An institution whose purpose is to influence the actions of the governing institutions - those established in a country's constitution. 

2 - Suffrage: "Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise is the right to vote in public, political elections and referendums (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote)."

3 - Elections: the formal process of selecting a person for public office or of accepting or rejecting a political proposition by voting.

4 - Groups and Interests: An interest group, also called special interest group, advocacy group, or pressure group, any association of individuals or organizations, usually formally organized, that, on the basis of one or more shared concerns, attempts to influence public policy in its favor.

5 - Political Parties: A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular country's elections.

6 - The Press: the collective designation of media vehicles that carry out journalism and other functions of informative communication, in contrast to pure propaganda or entertainment communication.

Lecture Notes

- The First Amendment and the Political Institutions.
- Federalist 10.
- The Iron Law of Oligarchy.
- Democracy.
- Elections, Appointment, and the Separation of Powers.
- Elections in the U.S. Constitution.
- U.S. Election Code.
- Suffrage.
- Title 1 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 - Voting Rights.
- The Voting Rights Act of 1965.
- Shelby v Holder.
- The Political Freedoms in the Texas Bill of Rights.
- Texas Constitution, Article 6, Suffrage.
- Texas Election Code.
- Search Campaign Finance Reports.
- Candidate Information.

Why do you have to take this class? Part 1

The short answer is that you have to - it is required by the state of Texas in order for you to get a degree from a public college or university. But I'll cover that in the next section. 

Here I want to cover the role that education was supposed to play in a system of self government according to the framers of the U.S. Constitution. It was considered necessary. An uneducated electorate lacks the skills necessary to govern effectively, or more importantly, ensure that a tyranny does not slowly develop and impose itself upon the populace. This make happen if the popular, limited constitutional system is not upheld.

A commonly repeated quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin makes the point. Here's the story: 

Benjamin Franklin: The source of this quotation is a journal kept by James McHenry (1753-1816) while he was a Maryland delegate to the Constitutional Convention. On the page where McHenry records the events of the last day of the convention, September 18, 1787, he wrote: “A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy – A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.” Then McHenry added: “The Lady here alluded to was Mrs. Powel of Philada.” The journal is at the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress.

A republic is a governing system based indirectly on the people. This is why it is called a system of self rule. Through their votes, the people have influence over how they are ruled. They can offer their consent to existing policy by keeping the same people in charge, or withdraw that consent by changing them.

A monarchy is based on the monarch. This applies to any system headed by an autocrat who has absolute power. Until the late 1680s, the British monarch claimed to rule by divine right. The people had no say in how they were ruled. They couldn't even judge the king - only God could do that. This isn't entirely true since different groups had sufficient power to push back against the monarch, but that often involved violence, like when the British Parliament had Charles the Firsts head chopped off. 

These systems do not require an educated population. In fact, its best if the population remains uneducated, and certainly illiterate. Ideas can evolve and information spread in such a situation.

But a system of self-rule requires an educated ruling class. And in a system of self-rule - assuming broad participatory rights - we are all members of the ruling class, at least potentially. Which means we all have to be educated. 

Later we will discuss the gradual expansion of suffrage - participatory rights - and note that early limits on suffrage were justified due to the limited access to education. 

The following quote from Alexander Hamilton makes this clear. He did not care for the public's opinion about the recently signed constitution since he did not think most people were in a position to properly evaluate it: 

Alexander Hamilton: For my part, I am not much attached to the majesty of the multitude, and therefore waive all pretensions (founded on such conduct), to their countenance. I consider them in general as very ill qualified to judge for themselves what government will best suit their peculiar situations; nor is this to be wondered at. The science of government is not easily understood. . . .  men of good education and deep reflection, only, are judges of the form of a government; whether it is constituted on such principles as will restrain arbitrary power, on the one hand, and equal to the exclusion of corruption and the destruction of licentiousness on the other; whether the New Constitution, it adopted, will prove adequate to such desirable ends, time, the mother of events, will show. - Ceasar #2.

There are two aspects of this point. The first regards access to education - which was largely limited to the wealthy since there was no public education as we would recognize it today. Families who could afford private tutors, and did not need the labor of their children, were able to ensure they were educated. Those could not afford tutors were unable to do so. An understanding of "the science of government" was limited to this group of people. 

Wealth also provided these people, once educated, the ability to apply that education to current circumstance. They had the leisure to follow and contribute to ongoing issues, especially those on a national and international scale. It took money to participate in many of the political events of the revolutionary period, such as the continental congresses.

In addition, the idea that one is not limited by the need to engage in wage labor meant that they had time to think about issues and not act rashly. While this ensured that political decisions were made intelligently, it also limited participation and gave the wealthy the ability to maintain power. This helps explain the efforts to keep certain populations relatively uneducated, in some cases make it illegal to educate them.

The following quote by one of the authors of the Federalist Papers, and the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court makes this point clearly.|

“Those who own the country ought to govern it.” - John Jay

- Who was John Jay anyway?

Nevertheless, expectations were that the United States would aggressively move westward, which required that educational opportunities be broadened in order to ensure adequate governance in the newly established territories and states. 

Thomas Jefferson was a leading advocate of expanding access to public education, though may of his efforts were initially unsuccessful. This is the preamble to one of these attempts: 

Thomas Jefferson: Whereas it appeareth that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights, and are at the same time themselves better guarded against degeneracy, yet experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts, which history exhibiteth, that, possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes. - A Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge.

Here he provides an idea about what an educated person should be able to do. The constitutional system separates the three major functions of government, and establishes a system of checks and balances to maintains that separation. But this can fail if the electorate is not aware of the mechanisms that ambitious people have used in the past to consolidate power. 

We should not only understand what has happened in the past, but be able to access and interpret information about current events in order to determine whether such efforts are underway today. He would almost certainly suggest that these efforts are always underway.

As a final point, we should have access to information along with the literacy necessary to understand it.

The people are the only censors of their governors: and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution. To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress the only safeguard of the public liberty. The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs thro’ the channel of the public papers, & to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers & be capable of reading them. - Liberty Fund 

 

I know of no safe repository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. - Thomas Jefferson

__________


Texas: 
 

Texas Declaration of Independence: [The Mexican Government] has failed to establish any public system of education, although possessed of almost boundless resources, (the public domain,) and although it is an axiom in political science, that unless a people are educated and enlightened, it is idle to expect the continuance of civil liberty, or the capacity for self government. - Texas State Library.

 

Texas Constitution. Article 7, Section 1 - A general diffusion of knowledge being essential to the preservation of the liberties and rights of the people, it shall be the duty of the Legislature of the State to establish and make suitable provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of public free schools.

All of these quotes suggest a relationship between an educated population and a population capable of self-government. Expansions in suffrage tended to be accompanied by expansions of educational opportunities. Conversely, restrictions in education helped solidify restrictions in suffrage, as well as access to the polls even if suffrage had been granted.

We explore this relationship in 2306 when we look at education policy, since education is primarily a power reserved to the states, but the national government has played a role in creating educational academies for the military and establishing land-grant universities on federal land. 

Here are a few links that take us through the establishment of educational institutions in Texas and the United States. Not that the creation of these institutions on the state level includes the creation of independent school districts and community college districts.

- legal education.

- The Big Three.

- Some Colleges Have More Students From the Top 1 Percent Than the Bottom 60. Find Yours.

- Education in the Thirteen Colonies.

- Education during the slave period in the United States.

- History of the United States Military Academy.

- Morrill Land-Grant Acts.

- Vocational Education.

- Junior College Movement.

- High school movement.

- Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.

Minor v. Happersett (1875)

The effort to continue limits on suffrage, and disenfranchise those who had been - sort of - suffrage picks up steam.

It adds to the argument that there is no guaranteed right to vote if one is a citizen.

- Click here for more.

Minor v. Happersett, 88 U.S. (21 Wall.) 162 (1875),[1] is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that, while women are no less citizens than men are, citizenship does not confer a right to vote, and therefore state laws barring women from voting are constitutionally valid. The Supreme Court upheld state court decisions in Missouri, which had refused to register a woman as a lawful voter because that state's laws allowed only men to vote.

The Minor v. Happersett ruling was based on an interpretation of the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Supreme Court readily accepted that Minor was a citizen of the United States, but it held that the constitutionally protected privileges of citizenship did not include the right to vote.

The opinion infamously concluded with the poorly crafted statement that "...the Constitution of the United States does not confer the right of suffrage upon anyone". This was clarified in Ex parte Yarbrough 110 U.S. 651 (1884) stating that "the Constitution adopts as the qualification for voters of members of Congress that which prevails in the State where the voting is to be done; therefore... the right is not definitely conferred on any person or class of persons by the Constitution alone, because you have to look to the law of the State for the description of the class. But the court did not intend to say that when the class or the person is thus ascertained, his right to vote for a member of Congress was not fundamentally based upon the Constitution."

The Nineteenth Amendment, which became a part of the Constitution in 1920, effectively overruled Minor v. Happersett by prohibiting discrimination in voting rights based on sex.[2] Minor v. Happersett continued to be cited in support of restrictive election laws of other types until the 1960s, when the Supreme Court started interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause to prohibit discrimination among citizenry in voting rights.

Was the Founding Undemocratic? The Property Requirement for Voting

- Click here for the link.

Quotes: 


Alexander Hamilton:

"If it were probable that every man would give his vote freely, and without influence of any kind, then, upon the true theory and genuine principles of liberty, every member of the community, however poor, should have a vote… But since that can hardly be expected, in persons of indigent fortunes, or such as are under the immediate dominion of others, all popular states have been obliged to establish certain qualifications, whereby, some who are suspected to have no will of their own, are excluded from voting; in order to set other individuals, whose wills may be supposed independent, more thoroughly upon a level with each other."


John Adams: 

It is certain in theory, that the only moral foundation of government is the consent of the people. But to what an extent shall we carry this principle? Shall we say, that every individual of the community, old and young, male and female, as well as rich and poor, must consent, expressly, to every act of legislation? No, you will say. This is impossible. How then does the right arise in the majority to govern the minority, against their will? Whence arises the right of the men to govern women, without their consent? Whence the right of the old to bind the young, without theirs?

why exclude women? You will say, because their delicacy renders them unfit for practice and experience, in the great business of life, and the hardy enterprises of war, as well as the arduous cares of state. Besides, their attention is so much engaged with the necessary nurture of their children, that nature has made them fittest for domestic cares. And children have not judgment or will of their own. True. But will not these reasons apply to others? Is it not equally true, that men in general in every society, who are wholly destitute of property, are also too little acquainted with public affairs to form a right judgment, and too dependent upon other men to have a will of their own? If this is a fact, if you give to every man, who has no property, a vote, will you not make a fine encouraging provision for corruption by your fundamental law? Such is the frailty of the human heart, that very few men, who have no property, have any judgment of their own. They talk and vote as they are directed by some man of property, who has attached their minds to his interest…

James Madison:

The right of suffrage is a fundamental article in republican constitutions. The regulation of it is, at the same time, a task of peculiar delicacy. Allow the right exclusively to property, and the rights of persons may be oppressed. The feudal polity alone sufficiently proves it. Extend it equally to all, and the rights of property or the claims of justice may be overruled by a majority without property, or interested in measures of injustice. Of this abundant proof is afforded by other popular governments and is not without examples in our own, particularly in the laws impairing the obligation of contracts.

In civilized communities, property as well as personal rights is an essential object of the laws, which encourage industry by securing the enjoyment of its fruits: that industry from which property results, and that enjoyment which consists not merely in its immediate use, but in its posthumous destination to objects of choice and of kindred affection.

In a just and a free government, therefore, the rights both of property and of persons ought to be effectually guarded. Will the former be so in case of a universal and equal suffrage? Will the latter be so in case of a suffrage confined to the holders of property?

Terminology for March 21

GOVT 2305 - ACC

Bicameralism
checks and balances
reapportionment
redistricting
party discipline
party line voting
the whip system
indictment
impeachment
arraignment
oversight
constituency service
the committee system
filibuster
cloture
franking
the pork barrel
presiding officers
hold
divided government
trustee
delegate
politico
fragmentation
the people’s branch
the state’s branch
the role of the Senate
conference committee
co-sponsors
majority leaders
minority leaders
----------

GOVT 2306 – ACC

education of legislators
power of presiding officers
special caucuses
the Texas Budget
the LBB
size of chambers
majority power
minority power
chubbing
quorum
hold
filibustering
killer amendments
committee system
redistricting
partisan gerrymandering
racial gerrymandering
professional / amateur legislatures
delegate / trustee / politico
term lengths
super majority
plurality
party line voting
party cohesion
powers of the lieutenant governor
constitutional rules for redistricting
low pay – part time
regular sessions
special sessions
preclearance
gender gap
Voting Rights Act
----------

UH GOVT 2306 – US Chapter 8

voter mobilization
voter turnout
voter behavior
level of income
level of education
age
race and ethnicity
gender gap
voter participation
civil war amendments
suffrage
mail in voting
state and local initiatives
referenda / recall
self interest
digital divide
traditional participation
voting
donating / funding
attending meetings
protests
letters to the editor / meme sharing
block walking
phone banks
misinformation
dissention
safe states
battle ground states
party identification
suffrage amendments
accidental mobilization
digital participation
low turnout in the US
voter registration
state level registration
permanent absentee ballots

Immigrant Voting Rights

It was not uncommon aqt one point. Texas allowed it until 1921.

- Click here for SJR 1.

- DEMOCRACY FOR ALL?: THE CASE FOR RESTORING IMMIGRANT VOTING IN THE UNITED STATES.

Americans are usually surprised to learn that immigrants enjoyed voting rights for most of our history and throughout the vast majority of the country. In fact, from 1776 to 1926, forty states and federal territories permitted noncitizens to vote in local, state and even federal elections. Noncitizens also held public office, such as alderman, coroner, and school board member. In practice, immigrant voting promoted civic education and citizenship. Immigrants learned civics by practice. Immigrant voting was also an effective method for facilitating the incorporation of immigrants. The notion that noncitizens should have the vote is older, was practiced longer, and is more consistent with democratic ideals than the idea that they should not. Curiously, this 150-year history has been eviscerated from American national memory.

Nor is immigrant voting merely a relic of the distant past. Noncitizens currently vote in local elections in over a half dozen cities and towns in the U.S., most notably in Chicago’s school elections and in all local elections in six towns in Maryland. In addition, campaigns to expand the franchise to noncitizens – primarily in local elections – have been launched in more than a dozen other jurisdictions during the past decade, including in New York, Massachusetts, Washington D.C, California, Maine, Colorado, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Connecticut, Vermont, New Jersey, and Texas. These campaigns propose to restore voting rights for immigrants in local elections; only a few have contemplated state level elections, and none would grant voting to immigrants in any federal/national election. There are slight variations in which categories of noncitizens can vote. Some cities and towns allow all immigrants to vote, including the undocumented or so-called “illegal” (Chicago and Maryland), while other places grant suffrage only to the documented or “legal” immigrants (Massachusetts). Differences also exist regarding which elections noncitizens can vote in, such as in school board elections, municipal elections, or state races. Although different terms are used to describe immigrant voting, including “noncitizen voting,” “resident voting,” “local citizenship,” and “alien suffrage,” they all mean essentially the same thing: enfranchising or restoring voting rights to those who are excluded from the electorate — immigrants who are not U.S. citizens.

From Vox: Why the right to vote is not enshrined in the Constitution - How voter suppression became a political weapon in American politics.

For this week's writing assignment for my ACC GOVT 2305 students. Explain the following article to me.

- Click here for the article.

The Founding Fathers made a lot of mistakes when they drafted the United States Constitution. Some of these were the result of extremely difficult compromises, and some of them were just, well, mistakes.

The biggest and most consequential mistake, one could argue, was the decision not to guarantee the right to vote to anyone. Suffrage was treated as a privilege reserved exclusively for property-owning white men, but it was not enshrined as an inalienable right in the Constitution.

Instead, these men placed power in the hands of the states, which is one reason the right to vote in the US has expanded and contracted over time with continuous battles over voter ID laws, literacy tests, poll taxes, and other measures designed to keep specific groups, like women and African Americans, from voting.

It’s difficult to overstate the price — moral and political — we’ve paid for this mistake. But a new book by American University history professor Allan Lichtman does a nice job of explaining it. The Embattled Vote in America is a sweeping look at the history of voting rights in the US, focusing on the constant struggle to extend suffrage in this country.

I spoke to Lichtman recently about how voting restrictions put American democracy at risk, why the right to vote is so important, and what we can do to solve this problem once and for all.

A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.

Read on ....

From Wikipedia: Jacksonian Democracy

An era when property requirements were eliminated - by the states, not by constitutional amendment. This reduced the power of freeholders.

- Click here for the entry.

Jacksonian democracy was a 19th-century political philosophy in the United States that expanded suffrage to most white men over the age of 21, and restructured a number of federal institutions. Originating with the seventh U.S. president, Andrew Jackson and his supporters, it became the nation's dominant political worldview for a generation. The term itself was in active use by the 1830s.[6]

This era, called the Jacksonian Era or Second Party System by historians and political scientists, lasted roughly from Jackson's 1828 election as president until slavery became the dominant issue with the passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act in 1854 and the political repercussions of the American Civil War dramatically reshaped American politics. It emerged when the long-dominant Democratic-Republican Party became factionalized around the 1824 United States presidential election. Jackson's supporters began to form the modern Democratic Party. His political rivals John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay created the National Republican Party, which would afterward combine with other anti-Jackson political groups to form the Whig Party.

Broadly speaking, the era was characterized by a democratic spirit. It built upon Jackson's equal political policy, subsequent to ending what he termed a monopoly of government by elites. Even before the Jacksonian era began, suffrage had been extended to a majority of white male adult citizens, a result which the Jacksonians celebrated.[7] Jacksonian democracy also promoted the strength of the presidency and the executive branch at the expense of the United States Congress, while also seeking to broaden the public's participation in government. The Jacksonians demanded elected, not appointed, judges and rewrote many state constitutions to reflect the new values. In national terms, they favored geographical expansionism, justifying it in terms of manifest destiny. There was usually a consensus among both Jacksonians and Whigs that battles over slavery should be avoided.

Jackson's expansion of democracy was largely limited to European Americans, and voting rights were extended to adult white males only. There was little or no progress, and in many cases a regression, for the rights of African Americans and Native Americans during the extensive period of Jacksonian democracy, spanning from 1829 to 1860.

From Buzzfeed: What The 2012 Election Would Have Looked Like Without Universal Suffrage

This is great info. What would the 2012 election result have been if suffrage had not been expended over American history? What if there has been no 15th mendment for example? These maps show us. Here's what the result would have been like if only white men could vote (nothing on if only white male proerty owners could vote - pity, but we could probably guess).

This Day in History: Harding publicly condemns lynching

The year is 1921. The story is from History.com, and it compliments our look at the shift parties took on civil rights issues - as well as the relationship between the national and state governments - over the 20th Century.

- Click here for the story.

On this day in 1921, President Warren G. Harding delivers a speech in Alabama in which he condemns lynchings—illegal hangings committed primarily by white supremacists against African Americans in the Deep South.

Although his administration was much maligned for scandal and corruption, Harding was a progressive Republican politician who advocated full civil rights for African Americans and suffrage for women. He supported the Dyer Anti-lynching Bill in 1920. As a presidential candidate that year, he gained support for his views on women’s suffrage, but faced intense opposition on civil rights for blacks. The 1920s was a period of intense racism in the American South, characterized by frequent lynchings. In fact, the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) reported that, in 1920, lynching claimed, on average, the lives of two African Americans every week.

During the 1920 presidential campaign, Harding’s ethnicity became a subject of debate and was used by his opponents to cast him in a negative light. Opponents claimed that one of Harding’s great-great-grandfathers was a native of the West Indies. Harding rebuffed the rumors, saying he was from white “pioneer stock” and persisted in his support of anti-lynching laws. Although the anti-lynching bill made it through the House of Representatives, it died in the Senate. Several other attempts to pass similar laws in the first half of the 20th century failed. In fact, civil rights for blacks were not encoded into law until Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964.

Harding’s public denunciation of lynching would appear insincere if one were to believe allegations that he had actually been inducted into the Ku Klux Klan while in office. In 1987, historian Wyn Wade published The Fiery Cross, in which a former Ku Klux Klan member claimed to have witnessed Harding’s initiation into the Klan on the White House lawn. Scholars have since pored over Harding’s papers, but have found no evidence to support this allegation.

 Wikipedia: Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill.

Main points from 2305

This is intended to be less a review than a review of key points made over the course of the semester. We will review these today in class.

• An educated public is considered essential to the preservation of a democratic republic

• American governing institutions and systems are based on history dated back at least to the Magna Carta.

• A side effect of this history is a governing arrangement is individual liberty.

• The government is legitimized by its resting on the authority of the general population, but the people  do not rule directly. 

• Governments do three basic things: they make, execute and adjudicate the law. Tyranny occurs if these three powers are controlled by one entity. The point of the separated powers is to ensure that these powers do not accumulate.

• The people who wrote the Constitution took human nature into consideration in how they designed each branch.

• Any action of the national government has to be justified by the Constitution – either directly or indirectly. This is not true of the states.

• The United States Constitution is written with vague terminology, which makes it subject to interpretation. Battles rage over how the Constitution should be interpreted.

• The Constitution says very little about the internal workings of each branch. They have evolved considerably over the years, and continue to evolve. 

• Some phrases in the Constitution can be traced to Magna Carta and the British Bill of Rights. 

• The Constitution says nothing about political parties, but parties developed very quickly as effective ways to organize Congress and then to organize the electorate.

• The Constitution allows the states to make rules concerning elections, and until the 15^th Amendment states has full power to determine who go to vote. This also includes the power to design House districts, which has led to gerrymandering on the state level.

• The Bill of Rights applied only to the national government prior to the passage of the 14^th Amendment.

• The Bill of Rights is focused primarily on limited the substantive and procedural powers of the national government. 

• The rights established in the Bill of Rights are generally balanced against the greater interests of society. They can all be limited. 

• The First Amendment is focused primarily on limiting the ability of Congress to pass laws regarding religion and political participation.

• States have the power to pass laws which organize political parties, primaries and how electoral votes are awarded.

• The right to vote - suffrage - was very limited in the early years of the republic but has expanded gradually over time. This has occurred largely because the national government has forced the states to expand suffrage.

• Some of the most important – or consequential anyway – checks and balances are not written in the Constitution.

• Voter turnout tends to be low in the United States.

• The relationship between the national government and the states was impacted significantly by the Civil War and the Great Depression.

• Equality was not a dominant concept in the Constitution until the 14^th Amendment.

• The bulk of elections in the United States are winner take all. This led to the development of a two party system. While there are multiple parties in the United States, only two are competitive.

• The two major competitive parties are not monolithic – they are composed of various factions which compete to determine what the parties actually stand for each election cycle.

• The Supreme Court has made it increasingly difficult for Congress to regulate campaign finance.

• Not all interests are effectively represented by groups. The most powerful groups are those that can overcome the free rider problem.

• Interest groups are especially effective when they are able to work themselves into the decision making processes of each of the branches of government.

Videos on the expansion of democracy in 1600s Britain

You Tube: What were the Putney Debates? | English Civil War.

- The Putney Debates: The Putney Debates, which took place from 28 October to 8 November 1647, were a series of discussions over the political settlement that should follow Parliament's victory over Charles I in the First English Civil War. The main participants were senior officers of the New Model Army who favoured retaining Charles within the framework of a Constitutional monarchy, and radicals such as the Levellers who sought more sweeping changes, including one man, one vote and freedom of conscience, particularly in religion.

 

You Tube: The forgotten radicals of the English Civil War | The Levellers.

- The Levellers: a political movement active during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms who were committed to popular sovereignty, extended suffrage, equality before the law and religious tolerance. The hallmark of Leveller thought was its populism, as shown by its emphasis on equal natural rights, and their practice of reaching the public through pamphlets, petitions and vocal appeals to the crowd.[1]

The Levellers came to prominence at the end of the First English Civil War (1642–1646) and were most influential before the start of the Second Civil War (1648–49). Leveller views and support were found in the populace of the City of London and in some regiments in the New Model Army. Their ideas were presented in their manifesto "Agreement of the People". In contrast to the Diggers, the Levellers opposed common ownership, except in cases of mutual agreement of the property owners.

 

Video: The Last Armed Rebellion in Britain | The Newport Rising.

- Chartism: a working-class movement for political reform in the United Kingdom that erupted from 1838 to 1857 and was strongest in 1839, 1842 and 1848. It took its name from the People's Charter of 1838 and was a national protest movement, with particular strongholds of support in Northern England, the East Midlands, the Staffordshire Potteries, the Black Country and the South Wales Valleys. The movement was fiercely opposed by government authorities, who finally suppressed it.

Support for the movement was at its highest when petitions signed by millions of working people were presented to the House of Commons. The strategy employed was to use the scale of support which these petitions and the accompanying mass meetings demonstrated to put pressure on politicians to concede manhood suffrage. Chartism thus relied on constitutional methods to secure its aims, though some became involved in insurrectionary activities, notably in South Wales and in Yorkshire.

Is Voting a Right Guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution?

Simple answer: No. 

Less simple answer: It's complicated.

- The Missing Right: A Constitutional Right to Vote.

Amendments to the Constitution have required “equal protection,” eliminated the poll tax, and made it unconstitutional to restrict voting based on race, sex, and age for those over 18. For years the Supreme Court relied on these amendments to expand the franchise, and the broadening of voting rights, which was associated with the civil-rights movement, was widely accepted as a marker of progress toward a just society until about 2000. More recently, in an environment of increasingly rigid partisan loyalties, controlling who votes offers more leverage than persuading voters to change their minds, and thus access to the ballot itself has become an arena of intense political conflict. These conflicts constitute what the election scholar Richard Hasen calls “the voting wars.” Most of these wars end up in the courts, where the rules of engagement—defined by our Constitution—do not sufficiently protect voters’ rights to exercise their franchise. In the absence of an explicit right to vote, the Court has found no issue with a variety of regulations that unnecessarily interfere with voting.

- What Does the Constitution Say About the Right to Vote?

If you were to look for a right to vote in the U.S. Constitution or Bill of Rights, you might have trouble finding one. Surprisingly, nowhere in the original text does it say that U.S. citizens have a right to vote. Instead, much of the government’s authority to protect voting rights stems from amendments adopted following the civil war and legislation passed during the civil rights movement. But thanks to a voting-rights skeptical U.S. Supreme Court and the Senate’s failure to pass new voting legislation, this authority has been severely weakened.

- Does the Constitution Guarantee a Right to Vote? The Answer May Surprise Yo

The Constitution makes reference to voting 15 times in the original document and another 22 in the amendments. But somewhat surprisingly, none of those mentions makes an explicit declaration that Americans have a right to vote — something many politicians and their supporters consider fundamental to democracy. 

. . . If it seems odd that such a fundamental right was not enshrined in writing, the explanation is simple enough: The authors of the Constitution, many of them deeply suspicious of universal suffrage, could not agree on a single standard for the right to cast a ballot.

. . . Gouverneur Morris, a New Yorker who wrote the preamble to the Constitution, argued that “the ignorant and the dependent can be as little trusted with the public interest” as could children, Dr. Klarman wrote. James Madison warned that voting should be restricted to the wealthy, “the safest repositories of republican liberty,” because the poorer classes would be swayed by populist appeals. Benjamin Franklin, the most prominent dissenter, pointed out that it was the commoners who had fought for and won American independence and that the rich were hardly immune to corrupting influences.

- The Right to Vote Amendment.

Voting is an American principle and a basic democratic right that should be protected, promoted, and practiced, which is why many people are surprised to learn that the U.S. Constitution provides no explicit right to vote. This leaves voting rights vulnerable to the whims of politicians, and some citizens with fewer rights than others.

More than a decade ago, FairVote became the leading institutional voice calling for the establishment of an explicit individual right to vote in the U.S. Constitution. We believe that a grassroots movement to establish such an amendment would go a long way in ending the “voting wars” that plague us today. FairVote continues to serve as a trusted resource in support of activists, organizations, and elected officials working toward a right to vote amendment. Through our Promote Our Vote project, we work to build widespread support for a right to vote amendment, while advocating for pro-suffrage innovations at the local level.

From the Constitutional Rights Foundation: Who Voted in Early America?

 More on the original eligibility to vote during colonial days.

- Click here for the article.

Becoming a freeholder was not difficult for a man in colonial America since land was plentiful and cheap. Thus up to 75 percent of the adult males in most colonies qualified as voters. But this voting group fell far short of a majority of the people then living in the English colonies. After eliminating everyone under the age of 21, all slaves and women, most Jews and Catholics, plus those men too poor to be freeholders, the colonial electorate consisted of perhaps only 10 percent to 20 percent of the total population.

The act of voting in colonial times was quite different from today. In many places, election days were social occasions accompanied by much eating and drinking. When it came time to vote, those qualified would simply gather together and signify their choices by voice or by standing up. As time went on, this form of public voting was gradually abandoned in favor of secret paper ballots. For a while, however, some colonies required published lists showing how each voter cast his ballot.

Voting fraud and abuses were common in the colonies. Sometimes large landowners would grant temporary freeholds to landless men who then handed the deeds back after voting. Individuals were paid to vote a certain way or paid not to vote at all. Corrupt voting officials would allow unqualified persons to vote while denying legitimate voters the right to cast their ballots. Intimidation and threats, even violence, were used to persuade people how to vote. Ballots were faked, purposely miscounted, "lost," and destroyed.

After declaring independence on July 4, 1776, each former English colony wrote a state constitution. About half the states attempted to reform their voting procedures. The trend in these states was to do away with the freehold requirement in favor of granting all taxpaying, free, adult males the right to vote. Since few men escaped paying taxes of some sort, suffrage (the right to vote) expanded in these states. Vermont's constitution went even further in 1777 when it became the first state to grant universal manhood suffrage (i.e., all adult males could vote). Some states also abolished religious tests for voting. It was in New Jersey that an apparently accidental phrase in the new state constitution permitted women to vote in substantial numbers for the first time in American history.

Review material for the 2306 final

Here's what you should prioritize as you prep for the test, but don't limit yourself to these.

I might get tricky.

Current events – 10 to 15 questions
- these will be based on items posted on the blog over the semester
A basic comparison of the Texas and US Constitutions
The content of the Texas Bill of Rights
Differences between the US and Texas Bill of Rights
The functions of local governments – both multi purpose and single purpose
Major periods in the shift from Democratic to Republican control in the state
The powers of the Texas Speaker
The powers of the Lieutenant Governor
The plural executive
The amateur legislature
The elected judiciary
The pros and cons of judicial elections
The influence of Jacksonianism on the design of Texas government
The impact of Supreme Court decisions on Texas
The organization of public education in Texas – ISD’s specifically
What is a city?
What is a county?
The chief elections officers of the state and of the county
The bill making process in Texas – constitutional requirements
Initiative, referenda, and recall elections statewide and on the local level
The impact of the Voting Rights Act in Texas
The constitutional powers of the governor
The content of the Texas Constitution – the headings of the articles
Qualifications to vote in Texas
The argument in the Texas Declaration of Independence
Suffrage in Texas – the impact of the national government on suffrage
State powers contained in the U.S. Constitution
Basic facts about the Texas Legislature
Primary elections in Texas
State and local sovereignty
Spending in Texas – which institutions get what? Where does the money come from?
The Economic Stabilization Fund
The role of the trial and appellate courts
The Texas Supreme Court and the Court of Criminal Appeals
The various designs of city governments
Types of single purpose governments
The powers denied to the states by the U.S. Constitution
The reserved powers
The budgeting process
The current lawsuit regarding cuts in education spending
How elections are managed in Texas
The voter registration process
The districting process – gerrymandering and its consequences
Committees in the Texas legislature
The selection of electoral college members in the state
The members of the temporary party organization
Term limits in Texas – who is and is not subject to it?
The State Board of Education
School Boards – Board of Regents
Home rule cities in Texas
At–large and single member districts
The White Primary
Police Powers
Political culture in Texas
The functions of each member of the plural executive
Party membership in the state legislature
Tactics the national government uses to compel the state to follow national laws
The governor’s influence on the bill making process
The politics surrounding the drafting and ratification of the 1876 Constitution
Rules regarding debt and the size of the budget in Texas
Tax policy in the state
Amendments to the Texas Constitution
County officials
The relationship between counties and the state
County chairs of the major parties in the state

Main points from 2305 - A post from earlier this year

This is intended to be less a review than a review of key points made over the course of the semester.

Some things to consider as my 5 week 2305 students prep for the final. 

• An educated public is considered essential to the preservation of a democratic republic

• American governing institutions and systems are based on history dated back at least to the Magna Carta.

• A side effect of this history is a governing arrangement is individual liberty.

• The government is legitimized by its resting on the authority of the general population, but the people  do not rule directly. 

• Governments do three basic things: they make, execute and adjudicate the law. Tyranny occurs if these three powers are controlled by one entity. The point of the separated powers is to ensure that these powers do not accumulate.

• The people who wrote the Constitution took human nature into consideration in how they designed each branch.

• Any action of the national government has to be justified by the Constitution – either directly or indirectly. This is not true of the states.

• The United States Constitution is written with vague terminology, which makes it subject to interpretation. Battles rage over how the Constitution should be interpreted.

• The Constitution says very little about the internal workings of each branch. They have evolved considerably over the years, and continue to evolve. 

• Some phrases in the Constitution can be traced to Magna Carta and the British Bill of Rights. 

• The Constitution says nothing about political parties, but parties developed very quickly as effective ways to organize Congress and then to organize the electorate.

• The Constitution allows the states to make rules concerning elections, and until the 15^th Amendment states has full power to determine who go to vote. This also includes the power to design House districts, which has led to gerrymandering on the state level.

• The Bill of Rights applied only to the national government prior to the passage of the 14^th Amendment.

• The Bill of Rights is focused primarily on limited the substantive and procedural powers of the national government. 

• The rights established in the Bill of Rights are generally balanced against the greater interests of society. They can all be limited. 

• The First Amendment is focused primarily on limiting the ability of Congress to pass laws regarding religion and political participation.

• States have the power to pass laws which organize political parties, primaries and how electoral votes are awarded.

• The right to vote - suffrage - was very limited in the early years of the republic but has expanded gradually over time. This has occurred largely because the national government has forced the states to expand suffrage.

• Some of the most important – or consequential anyway – checks and balances are not written in the Constitution.

• Voter turnout tends to be low in the United States.

• The relationship between the national government and the states was impacted significantly by the Civil War and the Great Depression.

• Equality was not a dominant concept in the Constitution until the 14^th Amendment.

• The bulk of elections in the United States are winner take all. This led to the development of a two party system. While there are multiple parties in the United States, only two are competitive.

• The two major competitive parties are not monolithic – they are composed of various factions which compete to determine what the parties actually stand for each election cycle.

• The Supreme Court has made it increasingly difficult for Congress to regulate campaign finance.

• Not all interests are effectively represented by groups. The most powerful groups are those that can overcome the free rider problem.

• Interest groups are especially effective when they are able to work themselves into the decision making processes of each of the branches of government.

Section Two - Constitutions and Charters

- The Constitution Annotated.
- Tarleton Law Library.

Ideally you now have a general understanding of what a governing system is, and what a political system is. This week we will look a bit more in-depth at the governing and political systems established by the constitutions of the United States and Texas.

This applies to both the class on federal government and the class on state and local government.

Ask ChatGPT the following: 

- What is a constitution? 
- What is a charter?

Also: 

- What is a law?
- What is statutory code?
- What is administrative law?
- What is case law?


The bulk of what we will do is look through these documents: 

- The First Charter of Virginia; April 10, 1606.
- The British Bill of Rights.
- The Colonial Charters.
- The Articles of Confederation.
- The Unites States Constitution.
- The Texas Constitution.
- Municipal Charters.
- - Alvin.
- - Houston.
- - Pearland.


Useful Terminology: 

- Articles of Confederation
- Constitutional Convention
- The Constitution
- bicameralism
- separated powers
- checks and balances
- expressed powers
- necessary and proper clause
- judicial review
- national unity
- supremacy clause
- amendments
- ratification
- federalists
- anti-federalists
- federalism
- Bill of Rights
- representation
- tyranny|
- limited government
- due process
- suffrage
- elections
- adjust powers of government
- state constitutions
- homestead law
- limited government
- monarchy
- plural executive
- popular sovereignty
- republic
- separation of powers
- social contract
- sovereignty
- suffrage
- Local Government
- annexation
- charter
- city manager
- council-manager system
- councils of government
- cumulative voting
- Dillon's Rule
- general law city
- home rule city
- initiative
- referendum
- recall
- mayor-council system
- municipal bonds
- ordinances
- place system
- preemption
- special districts
- Tax Increment Reinvestment Zones
- unincorporated areas
- representation
- delegate
- trustee
- mercantilism
- confederation
- federalism
- separated powers
- checks and balances
- classical republicanism
- incorporation
- originalism
- pragmatism
- treaty making
- presidential electors
- commander – in – chief
- granted powers
- delegated powers
- implied powers
- prohibited powers
- inherent powers
- reserved powers
- elastic clauses
- welfare clause
- commerce clause
- city charters
- popular sovereignty
- enumerated powers
- concurrent powers
- supremacy clause
- relations between the states
- Article 4 – US Constitution
- privileges and immunities
- full faith and credit
- dual federalism
- cooperative federalism
- devolution
- fiscal federalism
- categorical grant
- block grant
- unfunded mandate
- Dillon’s Rule
- home rule cities


Lecture topics - not required, but useful. Maybe even interesting.

- What is a Constitution?
- Constitutions, Charters, Statutory Code, etc. . . .
- Who is in charge? Divine Right vs. Popular Rule.
- Popular Sovereignty - Dual Sovereignty - Tribal Sovereignty.
- Declaration of Independence - United States.
- Thomas Hutchinson and The Loyalists Rebuttal.
- The Article of Confederation.
- The deficiencies of the confederated system.
- The Text of the U.S. Constitution.
- The 27 Amendments to the Unites States Constitution.
- The Federal System.
- The States within the United States Constitutional System.
- The Text of the Current Texas Constitution.
- The Constitutions of Texas.
- Dillon's Rule.
- Local Governments in the United States.

Outline - ACC GOVT 2306

- What is Power? 

- Why do you have to take this class?

- No Really . . . why do you have to take this class?

- Who is in charge? Divine Right vs. Popular Rule.

- Popular Sovereignty - Dual Sovereignty - Tribal Sovereignty.

- Constitutions, Charters, Statutory Code, etc . . .

- The First Virginia Charter 1606.

- European Powers in North America.

- The Indian Wars.

- Stephen Austin's contract to bring settlers to Texas, 1825.

- Manifest Destiny. 

- Territorial History of the USA: Every Month for 400 Years.

- Territorial Development of Texas.

- Political Culture.

- Land Speculation and the Development of the United States and Texas. 

- Indian Containment in Texas.

- From the constitutional convention - May 29: The deficiencies of the confederated system.

- The Federal System.

- The States within the United States Constitutional System. 

- The Texas Declaration of Independence.

- Similarities and Differences between the United States and Texas Constitutions.

- The Constitutions of Texas.

- The 1876 Texas Constitution.

- Amendments to the 1876 Texas Constitution.

- The Current Texas Constitution.

- The Texas Statutory Code.

- The Stages of Federalism and the ongoing conflict between the United States and Texas Governments.

- The National Powers and the Prohibited Powers to the States.

- Labor, Slavery, and Peonage in Texas.

- Indian Removal in Texas.

- Laws related to Women, Children, Families, and Marriage.

- The Civil War Amendments and Reconstruction.

- The Equal Protection Clause - Impact on Texas.

- The Elastic Clauses - Impact on Texas.

- State Sovereign Immunity.

- The United States and Texas Bills of Rights.

- The First Cities in Texas.

- The development of local governments in the United States and Texas.

- Dillon's Rule and State Preemption.

- Texas Constitution, Article 9: Counties.

- Texas Association of Counties.

- Texas Constitution, Article 11: Municipal Corporations.

- Texas Local Government Code.

- Municipal Codes of Ordinance.

- What are Single Purpose Governments?

- Texas Constitution, Article 2: The Separated Powers and the Checks and Balances.

- Texas Government Code.

- Texas Administrative Code.

- The Legislative Power.

- Article 3: The Texas Legislature.

- Political Parties in the Texas Legislature.

- The 88th Regular Session of the Texas Legislature.

- The Bill Making Process in Texas.

- The Appropriations Bill.

- The Texas Budget Process.

- The Texas Fiscal Size-Up.

- The Executive Power.

- Texas Constitution, Article 4: The Texas Executive.

- The Texas Plural Executive.

- The Powers of the Governor.

- The Texas Bureaucracy.

- Fiscal Size-Up: Areas of Expenditure.

- The Local Bureaucracy.

- The Judicial Power.

- Texas Constitution, Article 5: The Texas Judiciary.

- Criminal Justice and Public Safety.

- Code of Criminal Procedure.

- Civil Practices and Remedies Code.

- Penal Code. 

- Municipal Courts.

- Elections in Texas.

- Texas Constitution, Article 6: Suffrage.

- Electoral Rules.

- Gerrymandering in Texas.

- Campaigns in Texas.

- Campaign Finance in Texas.

- Civil Rights and Suffrage in Texas.

- Slavery, Black Codes, Jim Crow.

- The Voting Rights Act and Shelby County v Holder.

- Texas Election Code.

- Chief Elections Officers of the State and County.

- Political Parties in Texas.

- Interest Groups in Texas.

- Texas Ethics Commission.

- What is Public Policy?

- Tax Policy in Texas.

- The Police Powers.

- Education Policy in Texas.

- Health and Human Services Policy in Texas.

- Business and Economic Development Policy in Texas.

- Natural Resources Policy in Texas

- Regulatory Policy in Texas.

- Local Policy across Texas.