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Election Day: How We Vote and What It Means for Democracy

Hardback

Main Details

Title Election Day: How We Vote and What It Means for Democracy
Authors and Contributors      By (author) Emilee Booth Chapman
Physical Properties
Format:Hardback
Pages:264
Dimensions(mm): Height 235,Width 156
ISBN/Barcode 9780691239095
ClassificationsDewey:324.6
Audience
General

Publishing Details

Publisher Princeton University Press
Imprint Princeton University Press
Publication Date 15 November 2022
Publication Country United States

Description

An original defense of the unique value of voting in a democracy Voting is only one of the many ways that citizens can participate in public decision making, so why does it occupy such a central place in the democratic imagination? In Election Day, political theorist Emilee Booth Chapman provides an original answer to that question, showing precisely what is so special about how we vote in today's democracies. By presenting a holistic account of popular voting practices and where they fit into complex democratic systems, she defends popular attitudes toward voting against radical critics and offers much-needed guidance for voting reform. Elections embody a distinctive constellation of democratic values and perform essential functions in democratic communities. Election day dramatizes the nature of democracy as a collective and individual undertaking, makes equal citizenship and individual dignity concrete and transparent, and socializes citizens into their roles as equal political agents. Chapman shows that fully realizing these ends depends not only on the widespread opportunity to vote but also on consistently high levels of actual turnout, and that citizens' experiences of voting matters as much as the formal properties of a voting system. And these insights are also essential for crafting and evaluating electoral reform proposals. By rethinking what citizens experience when they go to the polls, Election Day recovers the full value of democratic voting today.

Author Biography

Emilee Booth Chapman is assistant professor of political science at Stanford University.