AP US Government AMSCO Guided Notes
5.15: Voting Rights and Voter Behavior
AP US Government Guided Notes
AMSCO 5.15 - Voting Rights and Voter Behavior
Essential Questions
- How does the Constitution and legislation protect voting rights, and how do models relate to voting behavior?
- What roles do individual choice and state laws play in voter turnout?
I. Redefining "We the People"
1. How has the definition of the electorate changed throughout U.S. history?
II. An Expanding Electorate
A. Early Voting Restrictions and Property Requirements
1. What voting qualifications did states impose in early America, and who was excluded from voting?
2. How did Andrew Jackson's presidency contribute to the expansion of voting rights?
III. Suffrage Amendments
A. African American Suffrage
1. What did the Fifteenth Amendment accomplish, and how was it enforced during Reconstruction?
2. What structural barriers did southern states use to prevent African Americans from voting after Reconstruction?
3. How did the grandfather clause, literacy tests, and poll taxes effectively suppress Black voting without explicitly violating the Constitution?
B. Progress Through Law
1. What Supreme Court decisions and legislation in the mid-1900s helped increase African American voter registration and turnout?
2. How did the Civil Rights Movement and the 1965 Voting Rights Act transform Black political participation in the South?
3. What was the preclearance provision, and why did the Supreme Court strike it down in Shelby County v. Holder?
C. Women's Suffrage
1. What role did activists like Susan B. Anthony play in securing women's suffrage?
2. How did women's voter turnout and voting patterns change from 1920 to 2024?
IV. Rounding Out the Electorate
A. The District of Columbia
1. Why did the founding fathers exclude Washington, DC from voting representation, and what did the Twenty-third Amendment accomplish?
2. What voting limitations does Washington, DC still face despite the Twenty-third Amendment?
B. Young Adults
1. What circumstances led to the lowering of the voting age to 18, and how did the Twenty-sixth Amendment address this issue?
V. Voting Models
1. What are the major models that explain how voters make decisions?
A. Rational-Choice Voting
1. What is rational-choice voting, and how do voters' individual priorities differ when using this model?
2. How can voters make rational choices that appear to go against their economic self-interest?
B. Retrospective Voting
1. What is retrospective voting, and what information do voters consider when using this model?
C. Prospective Voting
1. How does prospective voting differ from retrospective voting?
2. What role did prospective voting play in the 2020 Democratic primary between Sanders and Biden?
D. Party-Line Voting
1. What is party identification, and how does it predict voting behavior?
E. Other Factors: Candidates and Issues
1. How can candidate characteristics such as personality, integrity, and competence influence voting decisions?
2. What role do major political issues, particularly economic concerns, play in voter decision-making?
Key Terms
Civil Rights Act of 1964
electorate
Fifteenth Amendment (1870)
franchise
grandfather clause
literacy test
Nineteenth Amendment (1920)
party identification
party-line voting model
poll tax
preclearance
prospective voting model
rational-choice voting model
retrospective voting model
Seventeenth Amendment (1913)
suffrage
Twenty-fourth Amendment (1964)
Twenty-sixth Amendment (1971)
Twenty-third Amendment (1961)
Voting Rights Act of 1965
White primary
absentee ballot
Australian Ballot
gender gap
Help America Vote Act (2002)
midterm election
motor-voter law
National Voter Registration Act (1993)
political efficacy
polling place
precincts
provisional ballot
voter apathy
voter registration
voter turnout
voting-age population
voting blocs
voting-eligible population
wards