Just Elections: Creating a Fair Electoral Process in the United States [Paperback]

Dennis F. Thompson (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0226797643 | ISBN-13: 978-0226797649 | Publication Date: July 15, 2004 | Edition: 1

The 2000 election showed that the mechanics of voting such as ballot design, can make a critical difference in the accuracy and fairness of our elections. But as Dennis F. Thompson shows, even more fundamental issues must be addressed to insure that our electoral system is just.

Thompson argues that three central democratic principles—equal respect, free choice, and popular sovereignty—underlie our electoral institutions, and should inform any assessment of the justice of elections. Although we may all endorse these principles in theory, Thompson shows that in practice we disagree about their meaning and application. He shows how they create conflicts among basic values across a broad spectrum of electoral controversies, from disagreements about term limits and primaries to disputes about recounts and presidential electors.

To create a fair electoral system, Thompson argues, we must deliberate together about these principles and take greater control of the procedures that govern our elections. He demonstrates how applying the principles of justice to electoral practices can help us answer questions that our electoral system poses: Should race count in redistricting? Should the media call elections before the polls close? How should we limit the power of money in elections?

Accessible and wide ranging, Just Elections masterfully weaves together the philosophical, legal, and political aspects of the electoral process. Anyone who wants to understand the deeper issues at stake in American elections and the consequences that follow them will need to read it.

In answering these and other questions, Thompson examines the arguments that citizens and their representatives actually use in political forums, congressional debates and hearings, state legislative proceedings, and meetings of commissions and local councils. In addition, the book draws on a broad range of literature: democratic theory, including writings by Madison, Hamilton, and Tocqueville, and contemporary philosophers, as well as recent studies in political science, and work in election law.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In light of events such as the contested 2000 presidential election, it is imperative that voters are able to intelligently judge "the process of elections independently of the outcomes," this book argues. Through a careful analysis of electoral procedures, considered in the light of three main precepts (and chapters)-equal respect, free choice, and popular sovereignty-Thompson aims to give voters the philosophical and political know-how to become more engaged with elections, and to make better informed decisions about electoral justice. Thompson (Political Ethics and Public Office) is a professor of political philosophy at Harvard, and it shows: the ideas are meticulously presented and exhaustively explained, but this volume, which often reads like a textbook, can make for some slow going. Nonetheless, this is important work. Thompson examines the complex principles underlying arguments about district boundaries, registration, the voting process and term limits, among others. He also addresses questions of authority-i.e., who, among legislatures and courts and commissions, should have the power to decide which votes count. Despite the book's dry tone, it is well worth reading, as every American should understand the procedures and ideas it explains. As Thompson says, "reasonable disagreement about electoral justice is not only inevitable but also desirable."
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

"With Just Elections, Dennis Thompson sets out to do something timely, needed, and not yet tackled in similar fashion. Using the disputed 2000 presidential election as a catalyst for exploring a broad array of other contested structural issues currently on the political and constitutional agenda, Thompson integrates democratic theory with the nitty-gritty detail of institutional practices and policy issues in a way that not only extols the virtues of situating theory in concrete contexts but actually pulls off the difficult task of doing that in a productive way. Just Elections is a genuine achievement in the application of political theory to specific problems in the legal structuring of democratic practices." - Richard Pildes, New York University School of Law --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 269 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (July 15, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226797643
• ISBN-13: 978-0226797649
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #407,588 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Terrific book, March 31, 2003

By 

Sanford Levinson - See all my reviews

This review is from: Just Elections: Creating a Fair Electoral Process in the United States (Hardcover)

Dennis Thompson has written an outstanding book that discusses a number of important issues relating to how we conduct elections.

I want to take particular issue with the first reviewer, who seems literally unable to understand why denial of the vote to felons after they have served there sentence might be thought to raise serious problems. Even those who say, "Do the crime, pay the time," might see that once one has indeed paid the time, it makes a lot of sense to try to integrate the individual back into the society. Why should we require the person in effect to wear a scarlet F that makes him or her a permanent outsider and will only increase the probability of frustration, resentment, and ultimate recidivism? An intermediate policy would require that the released felon not violate the law for, say, three years. But what in the world justifies the lifetime ban that many states have adopted? Moreover, given that we live in a country that "felonizes" and incarcerates more people, per capita, than practically any other country on earth--and we really shouldn't be proud of being in the company of our only close competitors--it is important that those who have experienced incarceration have a political voice. Perhaps we might have done something with our insane drug laws had the hundreds of thousands of released felons jailed because of drugs been able to vote. Or we might actually try to give prisoners some job training rather than treat them in ways that add to the likelihood that they will be recidivists. And, of course, there's the practical reality that the exclusion of felons from the electorate has disproportionate effect on African-Americans, especially when, as in Florida in 2000, a zealously Republican administration is recklessly indifferent to making sure that the persons it is trying to eliminate from the voting rolls were actually felons instead of simply having a name similar to that of a felon. There's no justification for treating released felons as permanent "non-persons."

One might disagree with everything I say, just as one doesn't have to agree with everything that Thompson says. But it is foolish to dismiss his arguments, whether about felons or about anything else he discusses. He is one of our most thoughtful political theorists, and he's been writing about the practical meaning of democracy for the past 35 years. Anything he writes, most certainly including this book, is well worth reading.

Sanford Levinson
University of Texas Law School

1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Some good points, but...., November 15, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Just Elections: Creating a Fair Electoral Process in the United States (Hardcover)

Thompson discusses a wide range of the issues that bear upon voting rights and procedures: the disenfranchisement of felons, partisan gerrymandering, the expressive value of private versus public campaign finance, and much else. What he wants most is a broadened public deliberation about such issues. He thinks that most debate has remained within the confines of legislative halls and the courts. But "on the question of who should be a legislator, legislators are distinctly interested parties," and the context of litigation, whether over statutory interpretation or the judicial review of an act's constitutionality, is a very severe limit on the range of discussion.

Instead, Thompson, professor of political philosophy at the Center for Ethics and the Professions, Harvard University, wants the public to deliberate in "initiative campaigns, party conferences, voluntary associations, Internet chat rooms, high school classrooms, even talk shows."

This is unobjectionable enough. After all, there seems to be plenty of discussion of just about everything in internet chat rooms and talk shows, and Thompson's agenda is more to my taste than many of those that are served abundantly now in either of those two forums!

Unfortunately, though, when Thompson descends from advocating such debate to actually engaging in it, his own contributions can seem question-begging: "the largest group of citizens still denied the right to vote is convicted felons. One study estimates that the laws excluding felons disenfranchised nearly 5 million citizens. The traditional justifications for their exclusion - felons have broken the social compact and they are not virtuous citizens - do not seem compelling. They do not support the permanent ban that many states, including Florida, have enacted. Once felons have served their sentences, they should surely regain their right to vote."

Why should this "surely" be the case? It is not, after all, unusual for the punishment of a crime to involve several distinct deprivations, some surviving after others have lapsed. A stock broker convicted of insider trading may be imprisoned and informed that he will never again be allowed to register as a broker/dealer. One does not often hear the complain that after he has walked out of prison, he should surely regain his right to broker stock. There are simply different features of his punishment, one of which outlasts the others. Whether one characterizes the reasons for his imprisonment as a "violation of the social contract" or as an inadequately virtuous citizenship (the two possibilities Thompson allows between his dashes) does not seem particularly crucial. One's view of the lifetime ban on stock brokerage, or on voting, will turn on questions of appropriate punishment, or deterrence, and on whether the life-long restriction limits the felon's chances to do further harm.

Thompson apparently doesn't want to let himself be distracted into issues of crime and punishment, though, because his next paragraph begins, "Even if some restrictions on felons could be justified in principle, the effects in practice are likely to violate [the principle of] equal respect."

There are two effects-in-practice that he has in mind. First, the ban on felony votes contributes to a racial imbalance in the electorate, because it falls disproportionately on blacks and Hispanics. Second, the ban affects innocent people, whose names sometimes mistakenly appear on the lists urged to purge the voting rolls of felons.

The latter of those points is very weak. Any system of criminal justice runs the risk of punishing the innocent. There will be wrongful convictions, or bullets fired by law enforcement officers that may hit innocent parties, or accidents caused by highway police chases. It is not clear to me how the particular harm to the innocent that concerns Thompson different in kind from any of those.

His objection to the racially specific nature of the enforcement of such a policy is weightier. Still, there is much more that he might have said to build it up, and objections left unaddressed.

Too much of the book is occupied with weightless arguments. The fact that some solid points are score here and there isn't enough for me to recommend it.