Voting in Presidential Elections

Report Outline
Prospect for a Record Voted in 1936 Election
State Restrictions on Exercise of Franchise
Methods of Facilitating Exercise of Franchise
Patronage Vote-Getting and Compulsory Voting
Special Focus

Prospect for a Record Voted in 1936 Election

Popular Participation in Presidential Elections, 1892–1932

Approximately 58,500,000 American citizens will be eligible to register and vote in the presidential election of 1936. This election is likely to see a larger proportion of the eligible vote cast than any presidential poll of the last 30 years. In determining the size of the final vote much will depend upon the identity of the Republican candidate to be selected at Cleveland in June; upon the manner in which fundamental issues are presented, or evaded, in the campaign; and upon whether a third party enters the field. But, regardless of these and other influences, all present indications point to a tremendous outpouring of the voters in November. Participation in the election will probably compare favorably with the records of voting efficiency established in foreign countries during the post-war years, which have frequently been held up as examples to the American electorate.

A decline in voting efficiency in the United States, which began during the nineties, was sharply reversed in the presidential election of 1928, and in 1932 more than 70 per cent of the qualified voters went to the polls—as compared with less than 57 per cent in 1920 and 1924. The nature of the issues presented by the New Deal is such that a rise in voting efficiency to 80 per cent in the 1936 election is within the range of possibility, and an approach may even be made to the high record established in the presidential election of 1896.

Prior to 1928 the only interruption to the downward trend in voting efficiency came in 1916 when the question of American participation in the World War was uppermost in the minds of the voters. Enfranchisement of women by the adoption of the Nineteenth amendment to the Constitution on the eve of the 1920 election was followed by a sharp decline in the proportion of the eligible voters going to the polls, which continued into the presidential election of 1924.