The Political Economy of Voting Rights Enforcement in America's Gilded Age: Electoral College Competition, Partisan Commitment, and the Federal Election Law

Abstract

We develop a model of electoral college competition and apply it to the transformation of nineteenth-century voting rights enforcement. The Federal Election Law (1872–92) was born of an effort to secure political power for southern blacks, yet it developed into an expansive machinery to police federal elections in northern cities. We argue that the Reconstruction commitment to black suffrage gradually succumbed to the competitive structure of Gilded Age presidential elections, crowded out by a growing preoccupation with registration and voter fraud in the volatile swing states that typically determined electoral college victory. More broadly, we view the electoral college as a critical force in shaping American political development. With its structured system of competition for doubtful states and pivotal groups, the electoral college injects a unique logic into the dynamics of national politics.