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NEWS
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News Release |
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Voter turn-out low despite campaign efforts BOWLING GREEN, O.—Low voter turnout is a serious problem in American politics, but it is not a new one. Get-out-the-vote campaigns
have been struggling for nearly a century, according to Dr. Liette Gidlow, an associate professor of history and author of
“The Big Vote: Gender, Consumer Culture, and the Politics of Exclusion, 1890s-1920s.”
Published by the John Hopkins University Press, the new book explores the importance of transforming political values in order
to improve participation in the election process. Gidlow makes the case that the women’s suffrage amendment was important
not only because it enfranchised women, but because it ushered in nearly universal suffrage for the first time.
“The campaigns worked to boost voter turnout by changing the meanings of citizenship in the early 1920s,” she explained.
For years, get-out-the-vote campaigns have been an important strategy for encouraging citizens to vote. Today campaigns such
as MTV’s “Rock the Vote” and “Choose or Lose” target segments of the population.
Although voter turnout improved in this presidential election year, the underlying problems have not been addressed, the BGSU
historian contends.
“Gains need to be sustained and communities of voters need to be organized on a permanent basis to address the problem of
low voter turnout over the long term,” according to Gidlow.
Advance reviewers praised the Bowling Green historian’s book for providing “important insights for all scholars interested
in the creation of the political past and how the past influences our political culture today.”
Since its publication, “The Big Vote” has received several award nominations. Gidlow is currently working on her second book,
this one dealing with television advertising campaigns for presidential candidates from 1952 to the present.
The author earned her doctorate at Cornell University. A former legislative staffer in the U.S. Congress and chief of staff
in the Ohio Senate, Gidlow has taught at Bowling Green since 1998.
Earlier this fall she appeared on local television newscasts and was interviewed by New York Newsday, MSNBC/Newsweek on Air
and the ABC Radio Network, among others, offering her historical perspective on a wide range of issues related to the election
process.
(Posted December 22, 2004 )
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