Voter Guides Research Articles

The Voter's Guide to Election Polls (review)

In The Voter's Guide to Election Polls, Traugott and Lavrakas state that their goal in writing the book is to help "students of politics . . . appreciate the use of polls, especially during election campaigns" (vi). In pursuit of this goal, the authors have produced a very solid introduction to matters associated with polling. This book will be useful to all who seek to make sense of the relentless use of polling data during a campaign, be they journalists, academics, or concerned members of the public.

Leadership Through Language and Literacy: How Immigrants Repositioned Themselves into Active Community Participants Through Classroom Discourse

First we wanted to improve our skills but now we understand we need more than basic skills. We want not only to survive, but we want to thrive and be connected to our society. Literacy is the act of knowing the world. Literacy gives us more choices for change and more power. Literacy opens our mind to look at reasons and things in different ways. We want students to develop citizenship, get involved in civil society and get involved in their own community. We want to create an equal environment. (From a written document prepared collectively by the students of the Leadership Group for a national meeting of the Lila Wallace Libraries and Literacy initiative, 1999). Write to Read Program--Alameda County Library In 1984, a federal grant allowed several California libraries to launch an ambitious initiative to include literacy services within the range of library services offered to the community Alameda County, using a volunteer one-to-one model based on the Laubach method of reading instruction, opened its doors to provide tutoring services. Since then, the program has evolved, offering small group tutoring, using professionally trained staff with some volunteer support, and providing additional individual tutoring when necessary. Today, the curriculum no longer centers around work books; teachers use a variety of texts with themes that reflect the concerns articulated by students in the program. When the Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Fund approached us with a funding opportunity, our program had already launched several projects to encourage student leadership and participation. Some of our students were involved with Key to the Community, a state library-funded initiative to foster civic participation among adult literacy students. These students, along with others in the San Francisco Bay Area, helped publish an Easy Reader Voter's Guide for new readers. Another group of our students organized Action for Children's Education (ACE) by researching, developing and distributing a brochure to alert other families about ways to advocate for their school-age children. A new opportunity presented itself in 1997 when the Lila Wallace Libraries and Literacy Initiative (1997-99) wanted to expand literacy efforts by moving from individual to small group instruction. They determined that our program could be a possible model and awarded us funding for three years. These monies were used to afford students the opportunity to engage in a discourse atypical of many literacy and ESL classrooms. I have chosen to write about the Read to Write Program because the students found the process provocative, exciting, and life changing -and because this project changed the face of our program. Although we no longer have a leadership class, some students are currently working as administrators or teachers in the program. They are operating at the national level of adult literacy policy and continuing to link community concerns to our literacy classes. Their voices are represented throughout this paper. quotes I have inserted were collected though individual interviews and several focus groups conducted upon formal completion of the project. Some quotes are taken directly from written journals or periodic evaluations kept by the students. I have provided pseudonyms for the students involved to maintain their privacy. Who Were Students? During the program's three-year sponsorship, we enrolled a number of different students in what became known as The Leadership Class. Fifteen students volunteered on the first night we announced the program; though, as the project evolved it became apparent that many of the students were primarily interested in a space to practice their English. As the goals of the class became clearer, only those students interested in stronger community involvement remained with the project. Table 1 features the participants who stayed the duration of the program. …

Political Mobilization in the Pews: Religious Contacting and Electoral Turnout

Objective. We probe the impact of voter contact by religious groups, in the form of direct attempts to encourage voters to vote in a certain way and the placement of voter guides in churches, on voter turnout among white evangelical Protestants, white mainline Protestants, white Roman Catholics, and black Protestants in 1994, 1996, and 1998. Methods. Using data from the 1994, 1996, and 1998 National Election Studies, we fit a series of logistic regression models of voter turnout that feature, as key predictors, variables indicating whether an individual was contacted by “any groups concerned with moral or religious issues that tried to encourage you to vote in a particular way” and whether “information about candidates, parties or political issues [was] made available in your place of worship before the election.”Results. These forms of contact were most commonly experienced by white evangelicals and black Protestants, and in many instances such contacts accomplished their intended purpose. Conclusions. Interest group contacts—at least contacts from the types of groups examined here—have the potential to be no more effective than contacts by political parties, perhaps because their messages can be more narrowly targeted.

When a King Speaks of God, When God Speaks to a King: Faith, Politics, Tax Exempt Status, and the Constitution in the Clinton Administration

During the Clinton Administration, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) broke new ground in the enforcement of the tax code's ban on partisan political activity by tax-exempt religious organizations. President Clinton, meanwhile, used church buildings and religious services for political campaigning and made political speeches on behalf of candidates that intertwined the political and the religious. Thus, while the Clinton Administration clarified the role of religious exercise and expression in some areas of public life, like public schools and the federal workplace, Administration activities clouded the role religion is to play in political campaigns. The roots of this tension in Administration behavior are not new. Here, President Clinton acted in accordance with political and religious norms and a constitutional interpretation that have dominated most of American history. The IRS, meanwhile, sought to give meaning to tax code provisions tied to then Senator Lyndon Johnson's efforts to neutralize political opponents. Thus, this tension has been with us for nearly fifty years and has lain dormant until now only because of restraint in enforcement and timidity in practice. Now that the Clinton Administration has brought it to the surface, the tension demands resolution. This tension implicates both the Free Exercise and Establishment Clauses of the First Amendment. When the Federal Government requires churches committed to speaking truth in the public square to choose between publicizing their beliefs and remaining tax exempt, it burdens the free exercise of religion. For example, the Federal Government burdens free exercise when it restricts, under the tax code, the questions that churches may place on voter guides or introduce into public debate. This is true because fundamental to the mission to speak truth is the freedom to select the questions that truly matter. In addition, the Federal Government violates the Establishment Clause when it forecloses churches from attempting to serve as a conscience to power. This is so because the Establishment Clause seeks to guarantee that churches in America retain an unrestricted voice worthy of listening to. These views result both from a common understanding of the nature and pervasiveness of religion and from the political experiences of America and other nations. From Judah and Israel, across Europe, and into America, the centuries have shown that a State that is denied a moral compass does evil, and a State guided by a moral compass that has lost its integrity within the State's halls of power is worse than a State with no moral compass at all. Thus, the danger in current American political discourse is not that religious language will poison the world of politics, but that political participation will gut religious language of all truth.

Truth in Taxes a Voter's Guide to Election-Year Tax Talk

Truth in Taxes a Voter's Guide to Election-Year Tax Talk

Voting with the Christian Right: Contextual and Individual Patterns of Electoral Influence

The ability of conservative Christian political organizations to influence local and national political races seems remarkable - made possible through mass distribution of voter guides, magazines, radio advertisement, and political talk show appearances. Research on the Christian Right offers several competing ideas about support for the Christian Right. But little research to date has examined an important means of Christian Right influence in the contemporary politicalprocess: helpingpeople decide how to vote in elections. This article analyzes nationally representative data on the influence of conservative Christian political organizations on voting, and seeks to explain who uses the electoral advice of such organizations, and why. Our results affirm some perceptions of Christian Right influence - that it is higher among evangelical Protestant voters - and challenge others - that it is higher among the elderly, less educated, whites, economically insecure, and southerners. Finally, we provide theoretical arguments and empirical evidence for the importance of accounting for social context to understand the appeal of Christian Right perspectives to the nearly 20% of Americans who claim to be influenced by them.

Dead Law: The Federal Election Finance Regulations, 1974–1996

In the aftermath of the 1996 election campaigns, scholars, journalists, policymakers, and campaign finance professionals alike declared the House election financing system “broken” and “out of control.” That cycle saw party officials raising unprecedented amounts of “soft money” and directing it into specific federal campaigns. Coalitions of interest groups spent tens of millions of dollars attacking or defending candidates in “issue advocacy” campaigns, and disclosed neither their spending nor the sources of their funds to the Federal Election Commission. Groups like the Christian Coalition distributed tens of millions of “non-partisan” voter guides with thinly-disguised endorsements of candidates, again without disclosing their activity.

Book Reviews/Comptes rendus

Lisa Adkins Gendered Work: Sexuality, Family and the Labour Market.Brian S. Baigrie (ed.) Picturing Knowledge: Historical and Philosophical Problems Concerning the Use of Art in Science.Maureen Baker Canadian Family Policies: Cross‐National Comparisons.J.I. (Hans) Barker (ed.) Sustainability and International Rural Development.Kurt Bowen Evangelism and Apostasy: The Evolution and Impact of Evangelicals in Modern Mexico.Cecilia Danysk Hired Hands: Labour and the Development of Prairie Agriculture, 1880–1930.Satadal Dasgupta (ed.) The Community in Canada: Rural and Urban.Theresa DeLeane O'nell Disciplined Hearts: History, Identity and Depression in an American Indian Community.Gerald A.J. De Montigny Social Working: An Ethnography of Front‐Line Practice.G. William Domhoff State Autonomy or Class Dominance? Case Studies on Policy Making in America.René R. Gadacz Rethinking DisAbility: New Structures, New Relationships.Hubert Gérard Victor Piche (eds.) La sociologie des populations.William Jankowiak (ed.) Romantic Passion: A Universal Experience?Peter S. Li The Making of Post‐War Canada.Ken Morrison Marx, Durkheim, Weber: Formations of Modern Social Thought.Ken Morrison Marx, Durkheim, Weber: Formations of Modern Social Thought.Louise Quesnel (ed.) Social Sciences and the Environment.Clayton Roberts The Logic of Historical Explanation.Deborah Root Cannibal Culture: Art, Appropriation, and the Commodification of Difference.Frank M. Stark Communicative Interaction, Power and the State: A Method.Michael W. Traugott Paul J. Lavrakas The Voter's Guide to Election Polls.Eric Venbrux A Death in the Tiwi Islands: Conflict, Ritual and Social Life in an Australian Aboriginal Community.Tony Walter The Revival of Death.Frank Webster Theories of the Information Society.Jeffrey Weeks Invented Moralities: Sexual Values in an Age of Uncertainty.Richard G. Wilkinson Unhealthy Societies: The Afflictions of Inequality.Yunxiang Yan The Flow of Gifts: Reciprocity and Social Networks in a Chinese Village.

Queering the State

The time has come to think about queering the state.' Lisa Duggan The year 1994 has set a record for antigay initiatives in the United States. At latest count, there are between eighteen and twenty-seven ballot battles gearing up, surpassing the previous record of sixteen in 1993. This rising tide of hate is partly a backlash against an increasing number of gay rights initiatives. Last year sixteen state legislatures took up measures to grant civil rights protection to gay men and lesbians or to repeal antisodomy laws (most of these proposals failed). But antigay initiatives are also part of a grander scheme to organize a right-wing voting block to take on issues such as abortion rights, school curriculums, and tax policies. This fight will be a daunting challenge to the organized lesbian and gay rights movement: the combined budgets of the six largest gay organizations total only about $12 million, compared to the more than $210 million in the combined budgets of the six largest right-wing religious organizations.2 The financial clout and cultural reach of these organizations should not be underestimated. For instance, Focus on the Family, based in Colorado Springs and founded by Dr. James Dobson, formerly a member of the Meese Commission on Pornography, boasts a $90 million annual budget and affiliated Family Councils in thirty states. It distributes the antigay video, The Gay Agenda, publishes nine magazines, and supports sixteen hundred radio programs. The Christian Coalition of Chesapeake, Virginia, distributed 40 million voter guides in the 1992 elections in its campaign to take over state and local Republican parties. It supports the Christian Broadcasting Network, the Family Channel, and the 700 Club, which reach millions of viewers daily, as well as two newsletters, Religious Rights Watch and Christian American. The Coalition's leader, Pat Robertson, situates their agenda squarely in the middle of party politics: We want . . . to see a majority of the Republican Party in the hands of profamily Christians by 1996. Finally, Citizens for Excellence in Education, an arm of the National Association of Christian Educators led by Robert Simonds and located in Costa Mesa, California, distributes the manual, How to Elect Christians to Public Office, and claims that thirty-five hundred Christians have been elected to school boards through its efforts. It is clear that the strategies of the religious right go well beyond the simple articulation of homophobic, racist, and antifeminist sentiments. Their targets are precise and their program well formulated, as is indi-

Queering the State

The time has come to think about queering the state.' Lisa Duggan The year 1994 has set a record for antigay initiatives in the United States. At latest count, there are between eighteen and twenty-seven ballot battles gearing up, surpassing the previous record of sixteen in 1993. This rising tide of hate is partly a backlash against an increasing number of gay rights initiatives. Last year sixteen state legislatures took up measures to grant civil rights protection to gay men and lesbians or to repeal antisodomy laws (most of these proposals failed). But antigay initiatives are also part of a grander scheme to organize a right-wing voting block to take on issues such as abortion rights, school curriculums, and tax policies. This fight will be a daunting challenge to the organized lesbian and gay rights movement: the combined budgets of the six largest gay organizations total only about $12 million, compared to the more than $210 million in the combined budgets of the six largest right-wing religious organizations.2 The financial clout and cultural reach of these organizations should not be underestimated. For instance, Focus on the Family, based in Colorado Springs and founded by Dr. James Dobson, formerly a member of the Meese Commission on Pornography, boasts a $90 million annual budget and affiliated Family Councils in thirty states. It distributes the antigay video, The Gay Agenda, publishes nine magazines, and supports sixteen hundred radio programs. The Christian Coalition of Chesapeake, Virginia, distributed 40 million voter guides in the 1992 elections in its campaign to take over state and local Republican parties. It supports the Christian Broadcasting Network, the Family Channel, and the 700 Club, which reach millions of viewers daily, as well as two newsletters, Religious Rights Watch and Christian American. The Coalition's leader, Pat Robertson, situates their agenda squarely in the middle of party politics: "We want . . . to see a majority of the Republican Party in the hands of profamily Christians by 1996." Finally, Citizens for Excellence in Education, an arm of the National Association of Christian Educators led by Robert Simonds and located in Costa Mesa, California, distributes the manual, "How to Elect Christians to Public Office," and claims that thirty-five hundred Christians have been elected to school boards through its efforts. It is clear that the strategies of the religious right go well beyond the simple articulation of homophobic, racist, and antifeminist sentiments. Their targets are precise and their program well formulated, as is indi-

The Voter's Guide to Environmental Politics: Before, During and After the Election, by Garrett de Bell [Review

The Voter's Guide to Environmental Politics: Before, During and After the Election, by Garrett de Bell [Review