Electoral rules have long served partisan entrenchment across American history

Evidence

Electoral entrenchment strategies take many different forms. The most straightforward is simply to prevent one’s opponents or their supporters from casting ballots, while enfranchising as many of one’s own supporters as possible. Thus, after the Civil War, Republicans in Congress sought to enfranchise black voters in the South, partly for moral and ideological reasons, but also to ensure the electoral dominance of their party. The end of Reconstruction allowed Southern Democrats to turn the tables, using force, fraud, poll taxes, literacy tests, and other tactics to disfranchise virtually all black voters and many poor whites, thereby restoring and entrenching their own political supremacy. Through the 1960s (and perhaps beyond), black disfranchisement was used as a tool of entrenchment for the Democratic party in the South; factions within the party; elected officials who might be vulnerable to defeat by black voters (or biracial coalitions); and, of course, white majorities, which were able to maintain political and social dominance by monopolizing control over government. In recent elections, voter ID laws, more stringent registration requirements, the curtailment of early voting, and other procedural regulations have been supported or opposed based in large part on their predictable effects on the racial and partisan composition of the electorate: Democrats accuse Republicans of supporting voter ID and similar procedural requirements in order to disproportionately exclude Democratic voters, while Republicans accuse Democrats of opposing voter ID laws so that more illegal ballots will be cast in favor of Democrats. — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 83

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to reader’s core question about why rationalizing ideologies become sticky once embedded in legal/procedural structure — disfranchisement as ideology hardened into durable legal technique. — connects to: Irish immigrants held the electoral balance of power in antebellum America. — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 45; Jacksonian democracy installed popular partisan election of judges nationwide — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 408; Partisan conflicts shaped the early structure of the federal judiciary — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 234 (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• Parties entrench themselves by writing the rules of party structure and ballot access #expands (0.90) — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 90
• Gerrymandering converts transient majorities into durable control without added votes #exemplifies (0.90) — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 89
• Partisan state admissions during the Civil War entrenched Republican Senate power for decades. #exemplifies (0.88) — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 303
• Labor law rules function as tools for partisan entrenchment #expands (0.85) — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 241
• US political gridlock stems from slavery-era veto point design #exemplifies (0.82) — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 539
• Electoral-counting compromises institutionalized moral compromises into law #exemplifies (0.80) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 116
• Naturalization policy in the 1800s was openly driven by electoral self-interest #exemplifies (0.80) — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 318
• Political entrenchment is coextensive with history’s influence if defined by dead-hand sway #complicates (0.75) — Daryl Levinson and Benjamin I. Sachs, Political Entrenchment and Public Law, 502