Recruiting the “Vanishing Voters” of the 1980s

Throughout his 1984 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, Jesse Jackson repeatedly rejected the dominant explanation of the “Reagan Revolution.” Instead of privileging the role of insurgent, white “backlash” voters that deserted Democrats in 1980, Jackson focused on the millions of students, African American, Latine, and poor citizens who did not vote. He claimed Reagan won the presidency “by the margin of despair,” because of a demobilized, unrepresentative, and shrunken electorate. The Democratic Party’s appropriate political response to Reaganism, therefore, should not be to chase wayward “Reagan Democrats” but to remake the electorate.

This paper explores the centrality of voter registration campaigns throughout the 1980s in progressive efforts to renew American democracy, defeat Reaganism, and prevent a rightward reorientation in the Democratic Party. Scores of activist groups conducted massive grassroots registration drives among the poor and communities of color. Other organizations attempted to remedy the profound class and race skew of the U.S. electorate through policy reforms that made the state, and not individuals, responsible for maintaining voter lists. Activists championed “motor voter” laws requiring state agencies to offer voter registration at motor vehicle and social service departments. Resistance to Democrats’ embrace of neoliberalism intertwined with the ongoing struggles to build a multiracial, egalitarian democracy. The fierce opposition to increased voter registration from elites in both parties revealed the acceptance of limited democratic participation into the post-Voting Rights Act era and the persistence of the earlier traditions of conditional citizenship, racial subordination, and civic stratification.