A truly postethnic America would be one in which the ethno-racial component in identity would loom less large than it now does in politics.
—David A. Hollinger in Postethnic America (New York: Harper Collins, 1995)
To be eligible to vote, a person must be a citizen of the United States and at least eighteen years of age. In a report to Congress on The Impact of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 on the Administration of Elections for Federal Office 2001–2002, the Federal Election Commission reported that in 2002 there were 215.5 million total citizens eighteen years and older in the United St…
Registering to vote is one thing, but actually going out to the polls on Election Day is another. Often people will register to vote but fail to exercise their right to vote when the time comes. While African-Americans are somewhat less likely to vote than whites, both groups are much more likely to vote than Hispanics and Asians and Pacific Islanders. Among non-Hispanic whites, 61.8 percent of ci…
The presidential election of 2000 between Republican candidate and Texas governor George W. Bush and Democratic candidate and Vice President Al Gore was one of the most controversial presidential elections in history. The election remained undecided for five weeks, after the vote was too close to call and hinged on the number of ballots each candidate received in the state of Florida. In several p…
The number of African-Americans elected to public offices at all levels of U.S. government has increased significantly since the 1980s. The largest gain has been in city and county offices, which include county commissioners, city council members, mayors, vice mayors, and aldermen/alderwomen. According to the Pew Research Center's 1999 report Retro-Politics: The Political Typology—Ve…
There was a tremendous increase in the Hispanic population in the United States during the 1970s (more than 60 percent) and the 1980s (53 percent), resulting in a population of thirty-two million Hispanic persons in the United States in 2000. However, the Hispanic community, according to some observers, has not attained political power equal to its proportion of the population. Two characteristics…
The design of electoral districts can have tremendous impact on the political power of minorities. It is possible either to draw the boundaries of an electoral district so that it has a large concentration of minorities, enhancing their political power, or to split up minority populations between many electoral districts, weakening their political influence. Designing electoral districts to favor …
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