Working Congress: A Guide for Senators, Representatives, and Citizens by Robert Mann

Author:Robert Mann [Mann, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780807157381
Goodreads: 22334280
Publisher: LSU Press
Published: 2014-11-03T00:00:00+00:00

Congress’s Own Rich History in Electoral Reform

Many democratic electoral changes have been passed by members of Congress in U.S. history. Among some of the more notable changes include the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment (1870), the Seventeenth Amendment (1913), the Nineteenth Amendment (1920), the Twenty-Fourth Amendment (1964), the Voting Rights Act (1965), the Twenty-Sixth Amendment (1971), and the National Voter Registration Act (1993).4 State reform efforts have also been prominent in American history, particularly during the Progressive Era, with the advent of the direct primary and the evolution of the Australian ballot, the initiative, referendum, and recall.5

Heeding lessons from history is essential to today’s legislator who wishes to contribute to the democratic tradition in the United States. Reforming electoral procedures in the United States has been a recurring theme ever since the first formal session of Congress in 1789. History is replete with such cases in two substantive ways. First, efforts to promote electoral fairness and the democratic ethos do not always succeed, especially in short-term circumstances. Well-intended reformers often meet with failure, at least initially, in their quest to enhance popular sovereignty. The successful reformer is the legislator who remains patient and does not capitulate to his or her opponents. Second, reforming electoral procedures is a constant work in progress in an imperfect system. Human enterprises are flawed by definition and always fraught with error; the key to electoral reform is to constantly make the process more democratic in the world’s oldest functioning democracy.

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