The simple act of voting—and its barriers, costs, benefits, andmobilization—continues to be central to politics and politicalscience (Kelley and Mirer 1974). The Supreme Court case Crawford vs.Marion County Election Board (2008) and a well-attendedpanel on the topic at the 2008 APSA annual meeting in Bostonhighlight the pertinence of voter-ID issues to the polity anddiscipline for the 2008 and future elections. As simple as votingis, it is also “of the most fundamental significance under ourconstitutional structure” (Burdick v. Takushi1992).

“Turning out to vote is the most common and important act citizenstake in a democracy,” John Aldrich writes (1993, 246), “and,therefore, is one of the most important behaviors for scholars ofdemocratic politics to understand.” Turnout matters at the communityas well as the individual level; the larger a county's voterturnout, for instance, the more discretionary federal resources itis likely to receive per capita (Martin 2003). “The blunt truth,” according to V. O.Key (1949, 527), “is thatpoliticians and officials are under no compulsion to pay much heedto classes and groups of citizens that do not vote.”

The issue before the U.S. Supreme Court in theCrawford case (Crawford v. MarionCounty Election Bd. 2008) was whether a law (IndianaSenate Enrolled Act No. 483) passed by the Indiana legislaturerequiring most voters to show a photo ID in order to cast a ballotviolates the First and Fourteenth Amendments. Plaintiffs argued thatit works an unfair hardship on many people who do not have thegovernment-issued documents that count as a legitimate ID(Indiana Democratic Party et al., 12–16). Theyargued that the law, in effect, constitutes a poll tax, inasmuch asthere are costs to obtain the right kind of photo ID, costs thatunduly burden many eligible citizens wanting to exercise their rightto vote.

Following the 2004 elections Republicans assumed ascendancy inIndiana, capturing the governorship for the first time in 16 years,retaining control of the Senate and regaining control of the IndianaHouse of Representatives after eight years in political exile. Thispolitical development set the stage for the passage in April 2005 ofthe Indiana photo-ID law, also known as Senate Enrolled Act 483(SEA), on a straight party-line vote. Two days after SEA 483 wassigned into law by governor Mitch Daniels the Indiana DemocraticParty (IDP) filed suit in federal district court in Indianapolis(IDP v. Rokita 2006). The case was assigned ina blind draw to U.S. district judge Sarah Evans Barker, an appointeeof President Reagan and a former U.S. attorney. The same day theIndiana chapter of the ACLU filed an action in Marion SuperiorCourt, Crawford v. Marion County Election Board.The Indiana attorney general intervened in both cases to defend thelaw's constitutionality and removed Crawford tofederal court, where it was immediately consolidated withRokita.

“It is beyond cavil that ‘voting is of the most fundamentalsignificance under our constitutional structure’” (Burdickv. Takushi 1992, 433). Voting is particularlyfoundational “since the right to exercise the franchise in a freeand unimpaired manner is preservative of other basic civil andpolitical rights” (Harper v. Virginia Bd. of Educ.1966, 667). As Justice Kennedy dissented in Burdick(1992, 434), even depriving one voter of the exercise of thefundamental right to vote is too substantial an impact to withstandconstitutional scrutiny.

Because voter-identification laws discourage voter turnout,particularly among identifiable minority groups, theirimplementation abridges a fundamental constitutional right. The U.S.Constitution includes a little-known remedy for denying or abridgingthe right to vote that reduces a state's congressionalrepresentation in proportion to the extent of the abridgements.

On January 8, 2008, the United States Supreme Court heard argumentsin Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, a caserelated to the discriminatory effects of voter-identification lawsin the state of Indiana. Indiana has one of the most stringentvoting requirements in the nation, as voters are required to presentan up-to-date photo identification issued by the federal or stategovernment in order to cast a ballot. Plaintiffs argued that theIndiana requirements prevent significant and unequal obstacles tothe right to vote. The state argued that Indiana had the right toenforce strict requirements to prevent fraud and uphold confidencein the electoral process. Similar laws have also been proposed inmany other states, typically related to charges of vote fraud, andoften times tied into the divisive debate regarding undocumentedimmigrants or African American felons. Therefore the recent decisionof the Court has tremendous implications to the future ofphoto-identification laws across the United States.

Debates over whether to require voters to provide proof of identityat the polls, and just how that can be accomplished, are takingplace in legislative chambers and courtrooms across the nation. Atthe heart of these debates is the balancing act of ballot securityversus access to voting. Opponents of voter-identificationrequirements argue that they place a disproportionate burden onethnic and racial minorities, the poor, the less educated, the veryyoung, and the very old. Supporters of identification requirementsargue the standards are no higher than those required for boarding aplane or cashing a check, and the requirements are needed to preventvoter fraud.

The effect of voter-identification (voter-ID) laws on turnout is ahot-button issue in contemporary American politics. In April of2008, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed Indiana's voter-ID law, thenation's most rigorous, which requires voters to arrive at the pollswith a state-issued photo ID containing an expiration date(Crawford v. Marion County 2008). In a famousincident highlighting how Hoosiers were dealing with their state'svoter-ID law, representative Julia Carson (D-IN) was initiallyblocked from voting during Indiana's 2006 primary election forfailing to comply with Indiana's voter-identification standard.Carson identified herself with her congressional ID card; since thatcard did not include an expiration date and therefore did not meetIndiana's voter-identification law, she was turned away at the pollsbefore later being allowed to vote (Goldstein 2006). The rising wave of public, political,and legal debate crested two years later in the wake of the SupremeCourt ruling and during the Indiana primaries, with reports of adozen nuns being denied ballots at the polls due to their lack ofappropriate identification (Urbina 2008).

At the heart of the efforts to improve elections in the United Statesare two important values: access and integrity. To guarantee theright to vote, the polls must be accessible to all who wish to vote.To guarantee legitimate elections, only eligible people should beallowed to vote, and all votes must be tabulated correctly. Thesevalues have different implications for administrative procedures,ranging from the implementation of registration systems to thechoice of voting equipment to the set up of polling places andtraining of poll workers. Often these values work hand in hand, butat times they are at odds. Such is the case with the authenticationof voters at the polls (see National Commission on Federal ElectionReform 2002).

Letters to the editor are an important but poorly understood form ofvoluntary political participation. To learn more about the contentof letters to the editor and the characteristics of the people whowrite them we conducted a content analysis of 1,415 randomlyselected printed letters from eight newspapers from 2002 to 2005. Wealso matched the letter writers from our sample to demographic andpolitical information contained in a state voterfile.

Since 1996 the World Bank Institute and the Research Department ofthe World Bank have been developing six governance indicators calledthe Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI). The six dimensions ofgovernance include control of corruption, measuring perceptions oncorruption. Based on the literature review as well as the dataitself, this paper concludes that the conceptual and empiricalissues on building governance indicators constitute an ongoingproject.

Ridley Scott's 2000 filmGladiator presents a view of the transitionfrom dictatorship to the republic that one also finds in thediscourses of certain political leaders today. I argue that we canlearn about violence and the founding of a republic from an analysisand, especially, a critique of Gladiator.

In our professional work, many of us are involved in universityservice and politics and some of us enter administrative positions.As political scientists who became associate deans of colleges ofliberal arts and sciences, our observations from our administrativeperches and our disciplinary knowledge have provided insights on howfaculty can protect and promote academic values.

I spent the spring and summer of 2007 reading 185 books in the fieldof international relations, as I chaired two major book awards inthe field.

Human rights issues are closely connected to a range of politicalprocesses, from democracy and conflict resolution to judicialaccountability and terrorism. Despite the dramatic growth of thehuman rights field in recent years, however, it remains unclear howmuch the subject has influenced political science scholarship. Iassess this question by examining broad publishing trends, namelyhuman rights articles in the discipline's leading journals.

Times change, and so do research methods; gone are the days ofresearching with index cards. While academics may be slow to adoptemerging citation technology, the reference manager field is blazingahead. This article explains what reference managers are, addressestheir emergence in and potential impact on academe, and profiles anewcomer to the field: Zotero. We close by surveying and contrastingZotero's features with those of its staunchest competitors: EndNoteand RefWorks.

In 1970, Victoria Schuck reported in PS on femaleparticipation at our annual meetings from 1959 to 1969. Ever since1972 I have written on the gender participation balance at ourannual meetings, at first as a letter, later as a regularlyappearing note in this publication. This fall is the thirty-seventhtime I reported to the association membership about the tally.(Since I retired at the end of the 2007–08 academic year, I hopesomeone else will continue the number crunching.)

Surveys indicate that there is more interest today in politics amongcollege students than has been the case in the recent past. Thisarticle describes a multidisciplinary freshman seminar aimed atusing that interest to promote student engagement and the Reactingto the Past simulations at the course's center.

This article illustrates the profound learning that occurs—forstudents and instructor alike—when a class on third-worlddevelopment attempts to undertake foreign aid. With undergraduate,graduate, and departmental money, I purchased bulls and carts forfarmers, and goats for widows, in two West African villages. Suchexperiential learning personalized for students the study ofmicropolitics under conditions of poverty, the development oforganizational structure, and north-south dependency.