Research Guides: Voting &amp; U.S. Elections: Voting

Voting

As we approach election season, the library aims to support students’ efforts toward civic engagement, especially when it comes to voting. College students face many barriers to voting, as they are more likely to vote absentee and change addresses often. As a result, voter turnout among Americans aged 18-29 has historically remained the lowest among all age groups. College students sometimes lack crucial knowledge about voting rights, deadlines to register, and candidates running for office.

This research guide includes resources to help you register to vote, as well as recommended books and videos to help you learn more about voting in America. If you'd like assistance finding more resources on this topic, ask your Fulton Library librarians—we're always happy to help!

Web Resources

Vote.Utah.gov
This is Utah's official voter website. It has instructions for voter registration and information about candidates and issues.
Vote.org
Created by a non-profit organization, this site has links to voter registration in all 50 states and tools like election reminders.
Polling Place Locator
Use Vote.org's polling place locator to find out where you need to go to vote on election day.
Ballotpedia
Use Ballotpedia to find nonpartisan information about elections and candidates in any state. You can navigate by state or by office.
BallotReady
This website will show you which candidates and issues will be on your ballot, making it easier to do research in advance.
How to Vote: 7 Simple Steps for Ballot Beginners
Get all the information you need about how to become a voter—and why voting is important—from STEPS (Student Training & Education in Public Service).

Books

This list is just a sample of the books in the Fulton Library's collection. More books, especially books about the history of voting and voting rights, can be found using the library's online catalog.

American Indians and the Fight for Equal Voting Rights (Print Book) by Laughlin McDonald
Publication Date: 2010
The struggle for voting rights was not limited to African Americans in the South. American Indians also faced discrimination at the polls and still do today. This book explores their fight for equal voting rights and carefully documents how non-Indian officials have tried to maintain dominance over Native peoples despite the rights they are guaranteed as American citizens.
Blackballed: The Black Vote and US Democracy (Print Book) by Darryl Pinckney
Publication Date: 2014
Blackball is Darryl Pinckney's meditation on a century and a half of Black participation in U.S. electoral politics. In this combination of memoir, historical narrative, and contemporary political and social analysis, he investigates the struggle for black voting rights from Reconstruction through the civil rights movement, leading up to the election of Barack Obama as president.
Embattled Vote in America (Print Book) by Allan J. Lichtman
Publication Date: 2018
Americans have died for the right to vote. Yet our democratic system guarantees no one, not even citizens, the opportunity to elect a government. Allan Lichtman calls attention to the founders' greatest error--leaving the franchise to the discretion of individual states--and explains why it has triggered an unending struggle over voting rights.
Get Out the Vote: How to Increase Voter Turnout (Ebook) by Donald P. Green and Alan S. Gerber
Publication Date: 2015
The most important element in every election is getting voters to the polls--these get-out-the-vote (GOTV) efforts make the difference between winning and losing office...Get Out the Vote has become the reference text for those who manage campaigns and study voter mobilization. In this expanded and updated edition, Green and Gerber incorporate data from more than 100 new studies, which shed new light on the cost effectiveness and efficiency of various campaign tactics, including door-to-door canvassing, email, direct mail, and telephone calls.
Give Us the Ballot: The Modern Struggle for Voting Rights in America (Print Book) by Ari Berman
Publication Date: 2015
Countless books have been written about the civil rights movement, but far less attention has been paid to what happened after the dramatic passage of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) in 1965 and the turbulent forces it unleashed. Give Us the Ballot tells this story for the first time. In this groundbreaking narrative history, Ari Berman charts both the transformation of American democracy under the VRA and the counterrevolution that has sought to limit voting rights, from 1965 to the present day.
One Person, No Vote (Print Book) by Carol Anderson
Publication Date: 2018
In her New York Times bestseller White Rage, Carol Anderson laid bare an insidious history of policies that have systematically impeded black progress in America, from 1865 to our combustible present. With One Person, No Vote, she chronicles a related history: the rollbacks to African American participation in the vote since the 2013 Supreme Court decision that eviscerated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Known as the Shelby ruling, this decision effectively allowed districts with a demonstrated history of racial discrimination to change voting requirements without approval from the Department of Justice. Focusing on the aftermath of Shelby, Anderson follows the astonishing story of government-dictated racial discrimination unfolding before our very eyes as more and more states adopt voter suppression laws.
Uncounted: The Crisis of Voter Suppression in America (Print Book) by Gilda R. Daniels
Publication Date: 2020
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is considered one of the most effective pieces of legislation the United States has ever passed. It enfranchised hundreds of thousands of voters, particularly in the American South, and drew attention to the problem of voter suppression. Yet in recent years there has been a continuous assault on access to the ballot box in the form of stricter voter ID requirements, meritless claims of rigged elections, and baseless accusations of voter fraud. In the past these efforts were aimed at eliminating African American voters from the rolls, and today, new laws seek to eliminate voters of color, the poor, and the elderly, groups that historically vote for the Democratic Party. Uncounted examines the phenomenon of disenfranchisement through the lens of history, race, law, and the democratic process.

Videos

Moyers & Company: The Fight and the Right-to Vote (Streaming Video) by Bill Moyers
In this edition of Moyers and Company, Bill speaks with Sherrilyn Iffill of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and Ari Berman, contributing writer for The Nation magazine, about Texas' harsh voter ID law and the troubling issue of voter suppression.
Moyers & Company: The Long Assault on Voting Rights (Streaming Video) by Bill Moyers
In this edition of Moyers and Company, acclaimed historian Gary May - a specialist in American political, diplomatic, and social history - joins Bill to put the recent Supreme Court decision gutting the Voting Rights Act into historical perspective, noting it's just one moment in a long, ongoing struggle to ensure voting rights for every American.
Rigged: The Voter Suppression Playbook (Streaming Video) by Michael Kasino (Director)
Publication Date: 2019
America's democracy is threatened. Narrated by Jeffrey Wright, Rigged tells the story of how the principle of "one person, one vote" is being compromised, and how American citizens are fighting back.

Finding More Books & Videos

This list is only a starting point for books and videos in this area, not a complete list of resources on the subject. To find other books and videos on this subject, use the search box on the library's homepage. The search box defaults to OneSearch, which finds a mix of articles, books, and videos on a wide variety of topics. To look for only books or videos, toggle over to the Books tab or the Videos tab. This will limit your search to only the type of resource you select.

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