American Politics Commons^™

Causes Of Voter Wait Times During The 2022 U.S. Midterm Elections, Christopher Kiss

Politics Honors Papers

Voter wait times have been an enduring issue in American Elections, with significant variation across individuals, voting precincts, and states. Past research has found that waiting in lines at the polls negatively impacts future voter turnout and public confidence in voting institutions. Additionally, a racial gap in voter wait times and resource allocation has been found in numerous studies that implies serious issues with the equality of our elections. The exact causes of the racial gap and voter wait times in general are still somewhat unclear, but prior work has considered as causes the allocation of voting resources, the procedural …

When Coalitions Do Not Form: The Disability Movement And The Sustainability Movement In Congressional Hearings, Samantha Lavenhagen

American Studies Honors Papers

This thesis examines why and how the disability issue network has traditionally been excluded from the legislative process. The integration of the disability issue network into congressional hearings demonstrates larger themes of power and respect in politics and society. Whether through quotes, statements for the record, or testifying as a witness, issue networks influence lawmakers and lawmaking, building and maintaining relationships with Congress Members and other issue networks. This integration of the disability issue network into congressional hearings reveals larger themes of power and respect in politics and society. More specifically, this thesis investigates the absence of disability organizations from …

Civilian Manufacturing And National Defense: Strategic Planning For Globalization's Challenges, Izeck Kohler

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

This thesis examines the interconnection between civilian manufacturing and national defense within the context of globalization. The study aims to identify the challenges faced by the United States in maintaining its manufacturing capabilities and to propose strategic solutions to address these challenges. Through a comprehensive analysis of historical data, case studies, and policy recommendations, the research highlights the critical role of specialized and process manufacturing sectors towards national defense. The findings suggest that the creation of a federal executive department, strategic investment, diversification, policy re-evaluation, and collaborating with allies are essential for sustaining national defense capabilities. The study concludes with …

Internal Or External: An Exploration Of The United States Police Chief Hiring Process, Kayleigh Walker

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This paper explores the hiring processes of police chiefs across the United States, focusing on internal versus external hiring practices. The goal of this research was to identify common trends, legislative barriers, and the impact of leadership on the hiring process through historical context, legal analysis, and case studies. The findings suggest that internal hires dominate chief appointments, though external hires are often sought during crises. The paper concludes with recommendations for future research and highlights the need to more fully understand this phenomenon. Understanding the processes and limitations surrounding the appointment of new leadership is critical to reform and …

Increasing Women In Political Careers, Kendall Craig

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Women are underrepresented in political careers and through a series of questions, female, college-aged participants were asked to rank their answers to various questions in regard to inequalities women face on a scale of one to ten. The participants ran through two interventions where they learned about political careers as well as the struggles of women in political careers, the importance and impact. After the interventions, the exact same questions with the same scales were offered to participants to observe whether education on the topic could increase desire to seek careers in politics. The findings show that a small majority …

Meme Wars As Socially Situated Learning: Learning In Online Communities Of Hate, Conspiracy, And Insurgency, Kevin M. Clark

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

Learning is important in a pluralistic democracy, to enable citizens to make informed decisions. However, with the rise of the internet and social media, we need more than ever to understand how learning is shaped by social context and intertwined with issues of identity and belonging. One theoretical framework that addresses these social aspects of learning comes from the work of Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger on socially situated learning in communities of practice. This article focuses on what many would consider to be the darker side of learning—the rise of hate, disinformation/conspiracy, and insurgency in online communities. Specifically, it …

Voter Apathy And Divided Government, Ty'hier Simon

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The proposed research project will pertain to the voter attitudes associated with our government. The association with our government is critical to document because it may reflect the outlook of how the seats are distributed between the two major parties in our system. Voter apathy is the lack of interest in elections of representative democracies. In this project, a correlation may be drawn between voter turnout and how the delegation of our representatives looks. For example, if there is a low voter turnout there may be a swift change in power in Congress or there might be total gridlock. Using …

The Impact Of Religiosity On Political Knowledge Among Youth Voters, Norah Sackett

Honors Undergraduate Theses

As political engagement trends among young voters have continued to shift in the United States' political atmosphere, understanding the cognitive factors that influence these decisions is becoming increasingly important. Political efficacy, or the feeling that individual political action can impact the political process, impacting their civic duties, has long been regarded as a key determinant of an individual's political engagement. This study investigates how young voters' understanding of prominent political arguments relates to their sense of political efficacy, with a specific lens on individual religiosity.

Through an examination of this relationship between religiosity and overall comprehension of political arguments, this …

Solving The National Security Threat Of The United States Drug Crisis, Anna B. Freehafer

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This thesis analyzes the current drug crisis in the United States with the intention of forming a sound National Security Report and Strategy to equip current and future administrations with the necessary tools and information to adapt to the modern crisis. The number of drug induced and related deaths are rising in the U.S., which arguably is cause for alarm at the federal level. With the country divided on how to properly attack this crisis, which affects hundreds of thousands of lives across the nation, this thesis aims to provide a solution to a drug crisis that is unlike any …

The Effects Of Demographic Variables On Covid-19 Attitudes Surrounding The 2020 Election, Shelby K. Dalbec

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The COVID-19 pandemic was a worldwide phenomenon, with far-reaching consequences in all sectors of society, including the 2020 election. To better understand the implications of this global occurrence, this research examines the extent to which demographic variables influenced public opinions surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. This study takes a quantitative approach, analyzing datasets from the 2020 American National Elections Studies (ANES). It examines demographic, socioeconomic, and political factors as independent variables, with dependent variables that capture attitudes related to the COVID-19 pandemic. I hypothesized that there would be a strong relationship between party identification and COVID-19 attitudes. This study found that …

Florida’S Shift From Swing State To Republican Solid State, Alex Alonso Toledo

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This thesis seeks to understand better the changes in Florida’s recent state-level politics. Florida has recently been considered a competitive state on the national political stage, but in the last few years, it has favored the Republican Party. Using publicly-available data and information from databases allows me to lay the foundation for investigating the shift towards the Republican Party in the state. It is important to research this topic to show why specific political strategies adopted can cause significant changes in the political environment, thereby affecting how the public views and supports political parties.

Still Making It Up As He Goes: Revisiting The Hyper-Rhetorical Presidency In Trump’S Second Term, Richard Holtzman

Politics, Law, and Society Faculty Journal Articles

In Fast Capitalism’s 2020 issue, “This is Not Normal,” I explored Trump’s propensity for improvised rhetoric during his first term; that is, his reliance on “making it up as he goes” in his public statements, whether communicated verbally or through social media. The primary goal of my original essay was not simply to identify the president’s ad-hoc communication style—which is clear for all to see—but to argue that the president’s tendency toward improvisational speech matters because it represents more than just his approach to communication. This tendency toward improvisation also constitutes much of his approach to governing.

In “Making It …

Between "Hippies In Suits" And "Money Is The Name Of The Game": Farm Animal Advocates' Analyses Of Political Power In The Farm Bill, Jeff Thomas

Theses and Dissertations

The animal agriculture industry annually slaughters roughly ten billion land animals in the United States. What can be done to improve their welfare and lessen their suffering?

Over the past decade, the problem of farm animal welfare and suffering has drawn increasing interest from the effective altruism community, a loose movement of utilitarian advocates seeking technocratic solutions to social problems (Singer, 2015). As effective altruism has become a more potent driver of the animal welfare movement, an increasing number of nonprofits have begun engaging in political advocacy for farm animal welfare. Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz’ Open Philanthropy is the largest …

Reply Stop To Stop, Molly A. M. Garrett

Theses and Dissertations

Over the course of 8 years working in progressive political strategy, 2015–2023, I became increasingly critical of the systems, formulas and tools we were using to communicate with voters. Reply STOP to Stop is documentation of my time at graduate school, of wrestling with ideas of political design, language, communication and distribution. I analyzed my past work — all the texts, emails, social media posts, print ads, web banners, videos and other miscellaneous scripted content — and wondered if we would all be better off without it. Would elections be fairer, would there be less fake news, more community building? …

Workable Seams, Jackson Mills Smith

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In Jackson Mills Smith’s Workable Seams, readers encounter the stories, landscapes, and lives of rural Knox County, Indiana, from the oscillating vantage of a Hoosier boy raised with a Cajun sensibility. After relocating from Louisiana to the river bottoms of the crossroad state at a young age, the speaker gradually uncovers a local history only previously understood in fragmentary shards and fading glimpses.

Alternating between semi-lyrical embodied experiences and memories, documentary pieces in conversation with the state’s historical archive, and the retelling of exaggerated local yarns, poetry is a means of inquiry in Workable Seams. Topics range from …

“Emergency Relief As Routine”: The Evolution Of Fsa’S Livestock Forage Disaster Program In An Era Of Persistent Drought, Shae L. Olsen

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis examines the historical origins, current limitations, and future of the Farm Service Agency’s (FSA) Livestock Forage Disaster Program (LFP), the primary federal drought disaster relief program for ranchers in the United States. Drawing connections between the Dust Bowl-era Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA) and LFP, I argue that the AAA, while innovative at the time, prioritized the maintenance of commodity markets over ecological resilience, disproportionately benefiting white, landowning producers. This trend is reflected in LFP today. Through a policy analysis and original qualitative research, including interviews with 23 FSA staff members in nine states, I examine how LFP operates …

Ineligible Partners: Tribal Nations And Cooperative Federalism In The Historical Development Of National Forest Law And Policy, James H. Baker

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Lands within the National Forest System (NFS), like all federal public lands, are rooted in Aboriginal Title and were once exclusively inhabited by Indigenous peoples and communities. Through the process of treaty-making, the federal government amassed millions of acres of ceded Tribal lands, many of which are now managed by federal public land agencies, including 194 million acres managed by the U.S. Forest Service (USFS). Several Tribes reserved various use and property rights on these lands that are protected by the U.S. Constitution’s Treaty and Supremacy Clauses. The federal government also has an overarching trust obligation to Tribes – a …

Politics In Public Health: Growing Partisan Divides In Covid-19 Vaccine Attitudes And Uptake Post-2021 Presidential Inauguration, Hongbin Fan, Zhongliang Zhou, Guanping Liu, Chi Shen, Qi Zhang

Epidemiology, Biostatistics, & Environmental Health Faculty Publications

Objectives: To investigate whether the 2021 U.S. presidential inauguration contributed to a widening of partisan divides in COVID-19 vaccine attitudes and uptake. Methods: We leverage the presidential inauguration as a natural experiment and analyze data from the Household Pulse Survey and CDC vaccination records. Using a difference-in-differences framework with continuous treatment, we examine how the transition differentially affected state-level vaccine refusal rates and county-level vaccination rates, based on varying levels of partisanship as measured by the Trump-Biden vote gap. Results: Following Biden's inauguration, vaccine refusal declined more in pro-Biden states. Distrust in government and vaccines accounted for approximately 80% of …

What Is Reasonable? Effects Of Different Jury Instructions In A Fatal Police Use Of Force Case, Katherine M. Kaylor

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Since the Supreme Court case Graham v. Connor, police officers charged with misusing force on duty are judged against a hypothetical reasonable officer. Graham focuses on split-second decisions police officers must make and states police should not be judged with the benefit of hindsight. California goes beyond the subjective language of Graham and instructs jurors to look at the totality of circumstances, meaning they must consider all events and actions of an officer and citizen when assessing cases. The current study investigated whether type of instruction (Graham vs. California) affected mock jurors’ verdicts. Participants in the California condition …

In Search Of The Rational Voter In The 2020 Presidential Election: Understanding The Impact Of Voter Costs And Benefits On Turnout, Norou Diawara, Tiffany Henley, Samuel L. Brown, Md Iqbal Hossain

Mathematics & Statistics Faculty Publications

The ability to vote is one of the most valuable rights and privileges afforded by the Constitution of the United States to its citizens. For many, voting is not just a civic duty; it is also a choice. Voting is crucial to our democracy, and any changes to it may affect the efficiency of the democratic process. The bigger question is whether voters behave rationally by engaging in a cost-benefit calculus in deciding whether or not to vote. Using data science, this paper will examine the probability of voting and investigate its impact via cost and benefit among other variables …