Free and fair elections are the foundation of American democracy. Yet the path to securing voting rights for all Americans has been long and arduous and continues to face challenges today. For students and scholars of political science, history, sociology and other disciplines, the history of American elections and voting offers unmatched insight into the social, moral, and political fabric of the United States, both past and present.
Voting in America, 1789-1994 is a comprehensive collection of primary source documents related to the history of voting and elections in the United States. Comprised of thousands of documents—spanning more than two centuries—this one-of-a-kind resource offers boundless opportunities for inquiry into the democratic experiment that shaped not only America, but democracies around the world.
An authoritative chronicle of American voting
The right to vote is the most fundamental right in democratic society. Not only has voting been integral to the political life of the United States since its founding, it is also central to modern democracies around the world. In America, the history of voting is a record of expansion; expansion of the right to vote to an increasing and diverse population as well as an expansion of the voting processes in general. Yet, the process of expansion is not a history of equal access to the ballot across diverse demographics often differentiated by race, gender, and economic status.
Voting in America, 1789-1994 covers this history in exquisite detail, from watershed elections like 1800 and 1896 to landmark legislation like the 1965 Voting Rights Act and lesser-known milestones such as a 1966 Supreme Court case banning poll taxes.
Fully searchable and expertly catalogued
The resolutions, committee reports, legislative proceedings and court cases in this collection are derived from the American State Papers Collection and the United States Congressional Serial Set, including the House and Senate Journals and the Senate Executive Journals. Each has been digitized from the original hard copy volumes, expertly catalogued, and indexed. Voting in America, 1789-1994 features an intuitive interface that allows users to construct searches or use suggested searches that provide highly relevant results across a broad range of topics. And with Readex Text Explorer, digital humanities scholars and students can analyze text using data visualization tools like term clustering, frequencies, and trends, to view patterns and associations in a single work or across multiple selections.
