Ideas After Hours | Keeping Our Republic: Why and How Elections Matter

In-Person

Ideas After Hours: Where Curiosity Sparks Conversation is a new monthly series held after the library closes on the second Friday of each month. Enjoy an engaging presentation on a thought-provoking topic, then gather by the fireplace for refreshments and lively conversation inspired by what we've learned together.

As we approach the mid-term elections in a polarized nation, in might be useful to step back from the dueling demands for ending the Electoral College, Voter ID requirements, and partisan efforts at Gerrymandering to take an historical perspective on the role of parties and elections. Of course, ours is not the first time Americans have wrestled with questions of who gets to vote and how to organize the electoral process; nor is it the most polarized episode. At the core of these issues is the question of legitimacy, on what basis should we accord authority to political leaders. Our unquestioned basis of legitimate power, stated in the Declaration of Independence and operationalized, however imperfectly, in the Constitution, is popular sovereignty, that is, consent of the governed. When we have changed our mode of elections or expanded the franchise, the question of legitimacy has always been the underlying reason; the outcomes of our politics have left significant portions of the citizenry convinced that their consent was not given. We are again in such a position and it might be instructive to consider what we can take from past episodes when parties and elections were adjusted to satisfy demands for popular sovereignty.

Dr. Richard Harris is Professor Emeritus in Political Science from Rutgers University – Camden Campus. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, and his area of expertise is American Politics with specializations in Regulatory Policy and Business-Government Relations. His publications include books with Duke University Press and Oxford University Press and a co-edited Encyclopedia of American Political Development, A History of the U.S. Political System. The American Political Science Association awarded his 2003 co-authored article “Organized Interests and American Politics” the Mary Parker Follett Prize as the Outstanding Scholarly article in the field of Politics and History. Dr. Harris has received research support from The Brookings Institution and the National Endowment for Humanities and was a visiting Fulbright Scholar at St. Catherine’s College at Oxford. Rich and his wife, Ellen Wolf, retired in Lewes and split their time between Delaware and DC where their children and grandchildren live.

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