Review

General Books

Voter participation in the American electoral process has undergone shifts in dimension and numbers that historically have been interpreted as a result of political apathy and rational ignorance. In order to understand this transformation, one would be hard-pressed not to include this incisive analytical work. With emphasis on the shift of voting patterns and participation during the first two decades of the twentieth century, the author shrewdly combines political, social and quantitative analysis to offer a comprehensive interpretation of mass political behavior.	1
According to Kornbluh, a record number of eligible male voters cast ballots in all elections during the last two decades of the nineteenth century. The sheer size of the turnout indicated the absence of significant age, work-related, ethnic, or socioeconomic biases in the participation rates. In addition, electoral campaigns witnessed high levels of public involvement, and political parties actively cultivated and nurtured political connections and partisanship. During this period, parties were especially adept at informing and mobilizing the American public, organizing the electoral system and distributing political and social goods and services. The party system was well organized, and elections were closely followed and contested. Voting rates began to drop at the turn of the twentieth century, and Kornbluh cites a variety of reasons for this phenomenon. Among those factors are: 1) women were voting at a lower rate than men partly because they had yet to be socialized into electoral politics; 2) the turnout among lower socioeconomic groups dropped sharply; 3) young voters were going to the polls at a much lower rate; 4) fewer elections were being held as appointment and competitive examinations filled more government jobs; 5) elections began losing their entertainment value as other recreational activities, including spectator sports and theaters, proliferated: 6) the rise of split-ticket voting diminished partisan ties; 7) the appearance of the secret ballot, which replaced the party-printed ticket, functioned as a de facto literacy test, thus negatively impacting the participation of the poor, immigrants, blacks and non-English-speaking voters; 8) the increased use of primary elections frequently determined the winning candidate in single-party dominated states, thus rendering the subsequent general elections anticlimactic; 9) the South's use of the poll tax and the literacy test disenfranchised the Southern black population; and 10) voter registration requirements discriminated against poor and minority voters. The author successfully proves his argument that when elections became less competitive, partisan and participatory, they became less important to the average voter.	2
Kornbluh's engaging writing style adroitly combines very readable prose with concise quantitative measures. With 62 pages of endnotes citing important political, historical and sociological research, this book is not only suitable for use in a college classroom, but as a research source for scholars and the general public.	3
James McKee Christian Brothers University

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