Pulling the Curtain: Voting in America [rebroadcast]

BackStory

History, Education

4.5 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 3 November 2016

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

If the record TV viewership of the Clinton-Trump presidential debates is any guide, voter turnout for the November election could reach levels not seen since the Gilded Age. It’s easy to be nostalgic for the consistently high voter turnout in the late 19th century, until you consider all the people who weren’t eligible to vote back then. In this episode of BackStory, the History Guys look at voting trends - from the changing mechanisms of voting to how the electoral college system maintained racial hierarchies in the South.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is backstory. I'm Peter Onov.
0:02.4	I'm Ed Ayers.
0:03.4	And I'm Brian Ballow.
0:04.4	Election Day is right around the corner.
0:07.7	And once again, it's all coming down to a few key states.
0:11.2	If this is what the founders had in mind, well,
0:14.2	they sure haven't gotten much love for that idea.
0:17.4	Getting really to the electoral college has been the subject of more
0:21.3	constitutional amendments introduced into Congress than any other subject.
0:26.2	Another complaint we hear about voting these days is how few people actually do it.
0:33.9	But before you get nostalgic, consider this.
0:36.6	In the late 1800s, when voter turnout was at record highs,
0:40.0	it was really, really high for some suspect reasons.
0:43.2	Louisiana, normal election year in the guillot age,
0:46.6	you can get turnouts of 112 to 140 percent.
0:50.3	Boy, they like to vote.
0:53.2	This week on Backstory,
0:54.8	the history of voting in America.
1:00.4	Major funding for Backstory is provided by the ShiaCon Foundation,
1:04.2	the National Endowment for the Humanities,
1:06.4	the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation,
1:09.1	and the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BackStory, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BackStory and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.