caa a22 4500 388079428 CHVBK 20180307125209.0 cr unu---uuuuu 161130e199903 xx s 000 0 eng 10.2307/2585764 doi S0003055400216651 pii (NATIONALLICENCE)cambridge-10.2307/2585764 The Political Economy of Voting Rights Enforcement in America's Gilded Age: Electoral College Competition, Partisan Commitment, and the Federal Election Law [Elektronische Daten] 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. Copyright © American Political Science Association 1999 James Scott C. University of California, Los Angeles Lawson Brian L. University of California, Los Angeles American Political Science Review Cambridge University Press 93/1(1999-03), 115-131 0003-0554 93:1<115 1999 93 PSR https://doi.org/10.2307/2585764 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.2307/2585764 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- James Scott C. University of California, Los Angeles NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Lawson Brian L. University of California, Los Angeles NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- American Political Science Review Cambridge University Press 93/1(1999-03), 115-131 0003-0554 93:1<115 1999 93 PSR CC0 http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0 nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-cambridge