One Person, One Vote?

In recent years, the American public has ranked worries over the future of American democracy among its top concerns. American citizens consider free and fair elections to be the bedrock of U.S. representative democracy. However, for most of U.S. history, there has been a profound gap between the ideals of democratic representation and its reality, with many Americans being disenfranchised. This course will examine the history of efforts to secure voting rights for U.S. citizens, including women and people of color, as well as continuing attempts to curtail or suppress these rights. Further, we will survey how debates over voting rights intersected with conflicts over the nature of political representation, and how the ideal of “fair representation” has been construed and fought over during the 20th century. Topics will include: the nineteenth amendment, Jim Crow disenfranchisement in the U.S. South, the Voting Rights Act, histories of apportionment and redistricting, as well as fights over the electoral college.