Patchwork at the Polls: Should We Decide Democracy on the Fly?

Newswise — Voting—we think—is a national, constitution-based right. But that's not how it's exercised. According to University of Vermont political scientist Alec Ewald, author of the forthcoming The Way We Vote: The Local Dimension of American Suffrage (Vanderbilt University Press), forget what you think changed with the 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA) passed after the 2000 election debacle: local variation—from voter registration, ballot design and technology, distribution of voting machines, whether former felons are eligible to vote—is inherent in the American system.

The Constitution means what your county elections board says it does, according to Ewald. That's always been true; only since Gore v. Bush have we seen the dramatic effect it can have on outcomes. But while Ewald opposes practices that result in exclusion and inequality, his book makes the case, through historical, legal, and theoretical analysis, that these local practices are American democracy at work, that they give it form and help create its meaning.

We're about to decide another potentially close election, one that could, once again, present an electoral winner who lost the popular vote. Traffic patterns, glitchy voting machines, old ladies running polls in elementary school cafeterias who aren't versed in local felony enfranchisement laws—uniformity seems all but impossible. Can elections be fair in this heterogeneous country?

Ewald, an expert in electoral administration, felony voting rights, and constitutional law, has a unique perspective that could make a surprising, provocative story.