Elections are held every year for candidates running for school boards, town boards, and state assembly, not just national general elections. Civic engagement means staying involved between casting all of these votes to ensure that your community understands what's at stake before they go to the polls. Your vote matters—whether you're voting for the first time or you've voted before!
Official websites for local, state, and federal election information.
Find early and absentee voting information near you.
Resources about voting from organizations unaffiliated with any national, state, or local political party, candidate, or campaign.
Understand the history of voting rights. Learn how voting laws have evolved and why they matter today. Check out these resources and books available at MCC Libraries.
Learn more about issues that have affected the right to vote. The following are a sample of what's available to you at the MCC Libraries:
The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States
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Originally published in 2000, The Right to Vote was widely hailed as a magisterial account of the evolution of suffrage from the American Revolution to the end of the twentieth century. In this revised and updated edition, Keyssar carries the story forward, from the disputed presidential contest of 2000 through the 2008 campaign and the election of Barack Obama. The Right to Vote is a sweeping reinterpretation of American political history as well as a meditation on the meaning of democracy in contemporary American life.
One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy
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From the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of White Rage, the startling--and timely--history of voter suppression in America, with a foreword by Senator Dick Durbin. In her New York Times bestseller White Rage, Carol Anderson laid bare an insidious history of policies that have systematically impeded black progress in America, from 1865 to our combustible present. With One Person, No Vote, she chronicles a related history: the rollbacks to African American participation in the vote since the 2013 Supreme Court decision that eviscerated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Known as the Shelby ruling, this decision effectively allowed districts with a demonstrated history of racial discrimination to change voting requirements without approval from the Department of Justice. Focusing on the aftermath of Shelby, Anderson follows the astonishing story of government-dictated racial discrimination unfolding before our very eyes as more and more states adopt voter suppression laws. In gripping, enlightening detail she explains how voter suppression works, from photo ID requirements to gerrymandering to poll closures. And with vivid characters, she explores the resistance: the organizing, activism, and court battles to restore the basic right to vote to all Americans as the nation gears up for the 2018 midterm elections.
Gerrymandering and Voting Districts
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Gerrymandering, the manipulation of boundaries in order to benefit one group or political party, is not new, but thanks to technology it is more widespread. Questions about the constitutionality of gerrymandering have gone all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. This provocative volume explores the practice of partisan redistricting, how it affects elections and policy, whether it is unconstitutional, and above all what must be done to ensure that control of the government rests in the hands of the people.
A History of the American Suffragist Movement
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Chronicles the women's suffrage movement from its official inception at the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention throuth the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.
The Voting Rights War: The NAACP and the Ongoing Struggle for Justice
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The Voting Rights War tells the story of the courageous struggle to achieve voting equality through more than one hundred years of work by the NAACP at the Supreme Court. Readers take the journey for voting rights from slavery to the Plessy v. Ferguson case that legalized segregation in 1896 through today's conflicts around voter suppression. The NAACP brought important cases to the Supreme Court that challenged obstacles to voting: grandfather clauses, all-White primaries, literacy tests, gerrymandering, vote dilution, felony disenfranchisement, and photo identification laws.
The Disenfranchisement of Ex-Felons
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In the 2004 presidential election, 4,686,539 Americans--a population greater than the city of Los Angeles--were barred from the polls. In a country that has extended suffrage to virtually every other class of citizen, ex-felons are the sole segment of our population deemed unworthy to exercise what the Supreme Court has called the right preservative of all other rights, the right to vote. "The Disenfranchisement of Ex-Felons "provides a comprehensive overview of the history, nature, and far-reaching sociological and political consequences of denying ex-felons the right to vote. Readers learn state practices in Florida and Ohio during the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections; arguments that have been used in court houses, legislatures, and the press to justify such practices; and attempts to reverse legislation through state and federal governments. In a timely appendix to the 2004 election, Elizabeth Hull makes her case that the battle for civil rights will not be won unless ex-felons, who have fulfilled their obligations to society, are restored the same rights afforded all other American citizens."
Accessibility is important to us. While we have made efforts to make our guides as accessible as possible, it is possible that issues could be present. If you are having difficulty accessing content in these guides or if you have any questions about the accessibility of online information posted by the MCC Libraries, please contact us.