Product Description

From the award-winning author of Out of Order—named the best political science book of the last decade by the American Political Science Association—comes this landmark book about why Americans don’t vote.

Based on more than 80,000 interviews, The Vanishing Voter investigates why—despite a better educated citizenry, the end of racial barriers to voting, and simplified voter registration procedures—the percentage of voters has steadily decreased to the point that the United States now has nearly the lowest voting rate in the world. Patterson cites the blurring of differences between the political parties, the news media’s negative bias, and flaws in the election system to explain this disturbing trend while suggesting specific reforms intended to bring Americans back to the polls. Astute, far-reaching, and impeccably researched, The Vanishing Voter engages the very meaning of our relationship to our government.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #711615 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-09
• Released on: 2003-09-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

From Publishers Weekly
In the year preceding the 2000 presidential election, scholars at Harvard University's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy conducted a study designed to uncover the reasons behind the growing national voter malaise. Based on the Vanishing Voter Project results, Patterson (Out of Order), who teaches at the Shorenstein Center, identifies and analyzes why voters have turned away from participatory politics. Although his conclusions will not surprise thoughtful observers, the painstakingly collected statistical support (the study queried almost 100,000 Americans) will add weight to his suggested solutions. In Patterson's view, media bias, the primary system, an endless campaign season, negative campaigning and institutional obstacles that have undermined the importance of individual voters all combine to deter Americans from voting. His considerations of the first two are the most original. Because voters faced with negative reporting disengage, he argues that the most damaging media bias is not in favor of liberals or conservatives, but in favor of negative reporting. The primary system is ineffectual because the results in early primary states determine ultimate results; voters in states with later primaries lose interest. Patterson offers suggestions to political parties, the press and public officials about how to increase voter participation. Among them: shorten campaigns; provide more prime-time coverage of primary debates and conventions; and add Election Day to the list of national holidays. This straightforward analysis of the difficulties inherent in keeping voters informed and involved and the pragmatic suggestions for overcoming them should be of interest to politicians and private citizens alike.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Patterson, a teacher at the JFK School of Government, researched voter apathy, conducting weekly surveys during the 2000 campaign to gauge the rise and fall of interest in events. The disconnection between Beltway issues such as campaign finance reform and politics as experienced by ordinary voters is one of the reasons people disdain the polls, according to Patterson. He found a slough of boredom between Super Tuesday and the party conventions, matched by astounding ignorance of Gore's and Bush's basic policy proposals. Attention perked up for the debates between the two candidates and then lapsed into its customary indifference. Patterson's analysis of this pattern is well reasoned, and he assigns blame to the influence of single-issue groups, the relentless scoffing at candidates by journalists, and the calendar of primary contests. Offering pragmatic reforms, Patterson's descriptions and prescriptions merit mulling by politically minded readers. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
?A refreshing book. . . . Exceedingly thorough. . . . Patterson puts forth a cogent, well-documented case.? ?The New York Times

?A wise and skeptical account of the contemporary electorate.? ?The Washington Post Book World

?Engaging. . . . Provocative . . . required reading for the public-policy?minded.? ?Kirkus Reviews

?Thought-provoking.? ?Los Angeles Times Book Review

?A multifaceted treatment of a continuing public problem. . . . Readable and important.? ?Greensboro News & Record

?Valuable. . . . Patterson?s clearly written book offers a menu of sound . . . measures to help solve these problems.? ?Columbia Journalism Review

?Well-reasoned. . . . Offering pragmatic reforms, Patterson?s descriptions and prescriptions merit mulling by politically minded readers.? ?Booklist

?Patterson?s book . . . isn?t just another tired lament about the lameness of the political process. It?s an extension of the Vanishing Voter Project, designed to discover ?what draws people to a campaign and what keeps them away.? ? ?The Washington Monthly

?Outstanding. . . . A well-documented project that leads the reader through what works and what fails in our system, and how we can continue our representative republic and make it more responsive to the wishes of the electorate in the future.? ?The Decatur Daily

-- Review

Customer Reviews

Invisible Men?
This is a good book to read on its own terms, and after _The Right to Vote_ by A. Keyssar. The disastrous slippage of voter participations, after so much struggle to achieve political power, needs the point by point of social analysis given here, and also the context of its overall history. The author explores many factors in the problem, media bias, primaries, the excessive length of campaign process, along with negative tactics by candidates. A southpaw cynic will surely be suspicious there is always some invisible factor of, yes, 'class struggle' in such an outcome, although it is not quite clear how the dynamics operate in this instance. Part of the problem is impotence, hence indifference to the impotence of statistical gestures. Another is the passivity with respect to 'net information' available to the statistical citizen: how many citizesn even know how their system functions? And how many educational systems really convey to citizens this 'how'?
Still, the question reamins up in the air, and is in part a function of a greater history. The great experiment in representative democracy is barely two centuries old, and systematically tried for the first time in that regard. Therefore, our stance should be one of studying an outcome in the experiment of democracy rather than its instant creation by a constitution. We may only be in the first stages of this evolution. This work is eloquent on all the issues, and a manual of operations, or at least worry, with respect to a looming crisis of human political freedom.

Dated and Incomplete
It's unfair to read a book six years after publication and call it "dated," but unfortunately that is the reality for me. However, the trends portrayed within the book are still dramatic.

In 1990, 63% of Americans voted in the presidential election; in 2000 only 51% did. Meanwhile, the number of college graduates has risen, racial bars to voting have fallen, and registration laws have been simplified. (Roughly 10% of Americans cannot vote - eg. felons, compared to eg. 2% in the U.K.)

The "Vanishing Voter" is based on over 80,000 interviews during the 2000 campaign and reveals hints about the political sources of voter discontent.

Since many 1960 Southern voters were effectively barred from participating (poll tax; literacy tests) from voting, the clearest picture of what's been happening with turnout emerges from a look at non-Southern states only - 70% in 1960, 50% in 1996.

Bottom Line: The U.S. oldest continuous democracy, has nearly the lowest voting rate in the world. The shrinking electorate has come to include proportionately more older citizens, higher incomes, or hold hold intense opinions on issues like gun control, abortion - overall slightly favoring Republicans.

The decline can't be due to increased satisfaction with government. By the 1990s, only about 40% of major bills enacted were in line with what the majority said they wanted government to do; two decades earlier it had been 60%.

Negative campaigning is a problem. About 35% of "prominent" campaign ads in 1972 and 1976 were negative or attack ads; this rose to 83% in 1988 and even higher in 1996.

Interesting and important points are raised. Unfortunately, "The Vanishing Voter" does not tell us why this is happening.

An honest but inadequate effort
Dr. Patterson's book is, as far as I'm aware, the only serious analysis of non-voting in America that makes any effort to address the usual (and false) idea that our high rate of non-participation is somehow harmful, divisive, detrimental to democracy, etc. He presents another point of view, but devotes less than 4 pages to it; in the rest of the book he shows the same bias as other writers. Still, credit where credit is due; the book would be worth reading for this fact alone.