• Home
  • Journals
    • American Political Science Review
    • Perspectives on Politics
    • PS: Political Science & Politics
    • Journal of Political Science Education
    • All Journals
  • Awards
  • Career Paths
  • People
  • Diversity & Inclusion
  • Teaching
    • APSA Educate
  • Tell Us Your Story!
News
  • [ February 26, 2021 ] Meet 2020 DFP Spring Fellow, Samantha Chapa; 2021 Applications Open – Deadline March 19 Diversity & Inclusion
  • [ February 26, 2021 ] The Stewardship Model: An Inclusive Approach to Undergraduate Research Diversity & Inclusion
  • [ February 25, 2021 ] 2020 APSA Election Reflection Series: The 2020 Election: A “Red Alarm Fire” for American Democracy Democracy
HomeCivic EngagementCan All (Intro to American) Politics be Local Politics?

Can All (Intro to American) Politics be Local Politics?

November 18, 2019 Civic Engagement, RAISE the Vote, Student Voting, Students Comments Off on Can All (Intro to American) Politics be Local Politics?

Emily M. Farris, Associate Professor of Political Science at Texas Christian University, is a guest contributor for the RAISE the Vote Campaign. The views expressed in the posts and articles featured in the RAISE the Vote campaign are those of the authors and contributors alone and do not represent the views of APSA.

Can all (Intro to American) Politics be Local Politics?

by Emily M. Farris, Associate Professor, Texas Christian University

My Introduction to American Politics student, Hannah, and I opened our Fort Worth Star Telegram op-ed last April with a visual, connecting our campus at Texas Christian University to local politics in Fort Worth: “If we were to invite everyone who voted in Fort Worth’s last mayoral election to the TCU football stadium, about a third of the 50,000 seats would remain empty.” Although my research with Jane Sumner (University of Minnesota) and Mirya Holman (Tulane) shows that good data on local elections is scarce, one study ranks Fort Worth second-to-last in the country in terms of voter turnout in local elections. In an effort to try to combat the remarkably low voter turnout rates in municipal elections in Fort Worth, our op-ed and Introduction to American Politics class emphasized the importance of local elections and urged residents to get informed and go vote on May 4th.

Most introductory American politics classes do not focus on local politics, but as a scholar of urban politics, I know that local elections provide a great opportunity to engage students in many of the concepts and theories of American politics.

Local elections can bring to life ideas of representation, understandings of political behavior, or debates over federalism. To explore local politics in action, we created a voter guide for the election, hosted a forum for the mayoral candidates, and sought to raise awareness about the importance of local politics through local media coverage (that even got picked up by Bloomberg and the New York Times!).

With the timing of the announcement of candidates in February and election in early May, I designed my introductory honors section last spring to focus on the Fort Worth mayoral and city council election. The timing of off cycle elections is terrible for voter participation, as Sarah F. Anzia (Berkley) writes about her research here, but good for our class. Throughout the semester, we learned about political science research related to local politics and followed the election.

My class hosted a mayoral forum on campus and developed a class voter guide to try to encourage local participation.

In additional to the more traditional assignments of exams and reading quizzes, the voter guide was the major assignment for the semester for the students. Students also participated in the organizing of the mayoral forum, discussing and deciding each step of the logistics, writing the questions, and introducing the candidates. Organizing the forum was tedious at times, but students got a direct look into politics, getting to see how campaigns negotiate. The forum was a success: over 400 members of the community attended, and our mayoral forum ended up being the only mayoral forum with all three listed candidates present.

I created the voter guide assignment to have three parts, following crowd sourced advice from Twitter, including examples from Emily Snydor (Southwestern) and Kristin Flores Victor (CSU-Sacramento) who graciously shared their classes’ voter guide materials with me. First, the voter guide covered the basics on what folks needed to know about the process of voting, including eligibility, how to register, and different ways to vote. Then, each student was assigned one or two local races to cover in the second part of the voter guide, which gave more details about the districts and the candidates running. Students revised and updated the first two parts and wrote a reflection paper on the process and local election, connecting it to their knowledge about American Politics more broadly from our class. I compiled the guide, and we distributed it through social media. With a dearth of coverage on local candidates, many remarked how useful the guide was and how impressed they were with students who made it. More details on the voter guide assignment (including links to my assignment) are here on the Urban Affairs Review blog. Others have now done similar excellent voter guide assignments, including Clare Brock (Texas Women’s University) and Sarah Reckhow (Michigan State University).

In their final reflections, students connected to the purpose of the assignment. My student Zoe gave me permission to share her concluding paragraph in her reflection, as it summed up the goals of the assignment so well:

“I have developed a deeper appreciation of the nuances of local politics… I feel inspired to become more knowledgeable about elections in my hometown, and I now know how to effectively research candidates, voting procedures, and issues facing the public. But more than that, creating my voter guide has had a profound effect on how I view elections on every level. After examining bias, institutional power, voter turnout, and a multitude of other factors, I am confident that I will be well-informed and prepared for my city election, for the 2020 presidential election, and for any future situation (political or not) where I find myself faced with a single decision that can make a tremendous difference.”


Emily M. Farris is an associate professor of Political Science at Texas Christian University. She researches and teaches in the areas of urban politics and political representation and can be found on twitter at @emayfarris.

  • American Politics
  • Bloomberg
  • Local Elections
  • New York Times
Previous

The Summer Research Opportunities Program at Michigan State University

Next

Selecting in or Selecting Out? Gender Gaps and Political Methodology in Europe

Related Articles

Annual Conference

Author Meets Critics: “How Democracies Die” with Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt

November 22, 2019 Annual Conference, Grad Students, Public Scholarship Program Comments Off on Author Meets Critics: “How Democracies Die” with Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt

This year, participants in APSA’s Public Scholarship Program attended the APSA Annual Meeting and wrote reflections on the panels they attended. In this piece, Maryann Kwakwa writes about the roundtable Author Meets Critics: “How Democracies […]

Civic Education

Climate Change and Populist Democracy

December 17, 2019 Civic Education, Civic Engagement, Climate Change, Political Theory, RAISE the Vote, Voter Education and Engagement Comments Off on Climate Change and Populist Democracy

Gregory Koutnik, a PhD candidate studying political theory at the University of Pennsylvania,is a guest contributor for the RAISE the Vote Campaign. The views expressed in the posts and articles featured in the RAISE the […]

Follow Us

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • YouTube

The Democracy 2020 Project

  • Call for Submissions: Undergraduate Poll Worker Essay Contest

    November 9, 2020 Comments Off on Call for Submissions: Undergraduate Poll Worker Essay Contest
    Undergraduate Poll Worker Essay Contest The American Political Science Association’s (APSA) Electoral Assistance Task Force invites students who served as election workers in polling places to submit brief essays reflecting on the experience.  In preparing [...]
  • APSA Educate Call for Materials: “Teaching the 2020 U.S. Election”

    November 5, 2020 Comments Off on APSA Educate Call for Materials: “Teaching the 2020 U.S. Election”
    The 2020 U.S. election presents unique challenges and opportunities for political science students and educators. In response, the American Political Science Association is seeking teaching resources focused on the 2020 U.S. election, the presidential transition, and the incoming Biden-Harris administration to be featured on Educate – APSA’s new [...]
  • What You Should Know about Election and Voter Fraud

    November 2, 2020 Comments Off on What You Should Know about Election and Voter Fraud
    What You Should Know about Election and Voter Fraud The purpose of the APSA Election Assistance Task Force is to foster broader knowledge and understanding of non-partisan election assistance, including resources on non-partisan voter mobilization organizations, [...]

Recent Posts

  • Meet 2020 DFP Spring Fellow, Samantha Chapa; 2021 Applications Open – Deadline March 19
  • The Stewardship Model: An Inclusive Approach to Undergraduate Research
  • 2020 APSA Election Reflection Series: The 2020 Election: A “Red Alarm Fire” for American Democracy

FOLLOW @APSATweets

My Tweets

Copyright © 2018 I American Political Science Association

Read previous post:
The Summer Research Opportunities Program at Michigan State University

The Summer Research Opportunities Program at Michigan State University By Jamil S. Scott, Georgetown University, Kesicia A. Dickinson, Michigan State...

Close