Recent years have seen increased attention to the role of voting in establishing and maintaining systems of participatory and representative government. Questions regarding voter registration and the re-enfranchisement of felons, gerrymandering and the drawing of electoral maps, ranked-choice voting and ballot counting, and the propriety of challenges to electoral outcomes have highlighted the complication relationship among specific electoral practices, the principles underlying participatory politics, and the legitimacy of political authorities.
While these issues are prominent in contemporary debates around the world, they are not necessarily new. With that in mind, The Historian invites submissions for a thematic double issue on the “History of Voting and Elections in Principle and Practice.” We anticipate publishing a wide-ranging selection of articles dealing with the theoretical, ideological, political, and practical history of elections in a diverse set of times and places.
Submissions are welcome on the history of voting and elections in all times and places. Potential thematic foci for consideration include but are not limited to:
- Policies of enfranchisement and disenfranchisement
- Access and impediments to voting
- How electoral processes or practices shape the relationship between communities and their representatives
- Efforts to legitimize (or delegitimize) voting as an instrument of representational government
- The relationship between voting as a symbolic and a practical action
- The political implications of different electoral or ballot models
- Experiments in electoral practices or alternatives to elections
- Ideological and practical challenges to voting
Contributions that cover under-studied peoples or places, offer novel or innovative methodological approaches, or present comparative analyses are particularly welcome.
