98 Politics and elections
of a well-known and popular figure for a state governorship may well have a
considerable effect upon voter turnout for congressional elections, as was the
case when Nelson Rockefeller ran for Governor of New York in 1958.
Political campaigns at state and local level differ widely – in some areas
the ‘lone wolf ’ campaign is the norm, in which each candidate runs for office
on their own, creating their own organisation as they go along. Elsewhere
the parties are highly organised and in control of local politics. Similarly,
the finance for campaigns may be run on a shoestring, or involve millions of
dollars in a state-wide campaign for the governorship. Electoral tactics are as
varied and ingenious as the American imagination. In 1958 Senator Kuchel,
campaigning for the governorship of California, staged a ‘telethon’ in which
he appeared before the television cameras in Los Angeles in a programme
lasting for over twenty hours. Constituents were able to telephone the Sena-
tor and ask him questions; he discussed campaign issues and had voters in to
meet him before the cameras. Vice-President Nixon used a carefully staged
telethon in the 1960 presidential campaign. In 2004 Howard Dean in cam-
paigning for the nomination of the Democratic Party made extensive use of
the internet to organise support.
Perhaps the most important aspect of the variety of political styles in the
states is the fact that it is the states themselves that control the machinery
of election for all elective offices, including federal offices. This control of the
election machinery has been used as a weapon in the political battle rather
than as a piece of neutral machinery of representative government. Electoral
law has been used to prevent blacks, poor whites or immigrants from exercis-
ing the vote. Poll taxes, literacy tests, residence requirements and making
primary elections open only to white voters have all been used in the past to
discriminate against ‘undesirable elements’. This form of electoral discrimi-
nation has been attacked by the courts and by Congress. The Supreme Court
declared the ‘white primary’ unconstitutional in 1944. In 1957 and 1960 Con-
gress passed Civil Rights Acts providing federal machinery to aid blacks who
had been improperly deprived of the right to register as voters. In 1964 a
further Civil Rights Act strengthened the power of the US Attorney General
to supervise voting registration, and regulated the administration of literacy
tests by the states. In the same year the Twenty-Fourth Amendment to the
Constitution was ratified, outlawing the use of the poll tax as a prerequisite
for voting in federal elections. As a result of these measures, and of the regis-
tration drives by civil rights workers on behalf of black voters, black registra-
tions in the Southern states had risen by 1964 to over 2 million, giving rise
to the situation, long feared by Southern whites, where in a number of states
the outcome of elections could depend upon the black vote, so providing the
basis for the transformation of Southern politics. By the end of the twenti-
eth century the registration of blacks was proportionately almost as high as
that of whites, and their importance in the outcome of elections, particularly
at the presidential level, became considerable because of the tendency of a
large majority of black voters to support the Democratic Party.