With reference to Prince Edward Island, Canada, the author notes that a new school act for that province in 1971 consolidated 217 school districts into 5. The result has been a decline in community participation with corresponding alienation and apathy manifested by the public in two ways: a dearth of candidates offering themselves for election to…

The usefulness of presidential debates to the electorate and to the total political system is evaluated in this paper. The paper first reports the results of opinion polls concerning the value of the 1976 debates and cites studies showing the types of information that people obtained from watching the debates. It then considers whether voters'…

For this study of the relationships between accuracy of political information and attention to various mass-media sources of public-affairs information, personal interviews were conducted with 388 eligible voters in Madison, Wisconsin, and 129 eligible voters in Lexington, Kentucky, during October 1972. Variables measured included education,…

In this study, two dimensions of political decisional agenda (the elements which relate most to voting decisions) were examined: the number of items on the agenda and the content of the agenda items. Data were gathered in a study of the 1974 congressional election in the five largest counties of Illinois' 24th Congressional District. A total of…

As a guide for those concerned with presenting the financial needs of the schools to the voting public, general research findings in the art of campaigning for school funds are summarized. Techniques, tools, and practices that have been used with success are reported, as well as the importance of understanding the attitudes of voters toward school…

A review of the political controversy surrounding the constitutionality of literacy tests and fairness of judging literacy at a sixth grade level resulted in analysis of literacy voter tests in several states, and Louisiana and Alabama in particular. Both states required citizenship, age of 21, and ability to read and write any article of the…

Factors that produced defeat of bond issues and the actions taken by administrators of four California junior college districts to offset those factors are presented in this paper. Relevant findings from previous studies on school bond elections are summarized; the legal and fiscal context in which new California junior college districts operate…

In November 1972, electorates in California, Colorado, Michigan, and Oregon decisively rejected consitutional amendments that (according to their supporters) would have reduced or eliminated reliance on the property tax as a means of financing education. School finance reformers were perplexed by these defeats. This study sets out to explain the…

Outlines a partial framework of the range of concerns embraced by DuBois on matters pertaining to economic disadvantagement of black people, and offers some analysis of what the evolutionary process has yielded black people as economic participants and the implications of these facts for public policy today and tomorrow. (Author/JM)

Reports a questionnaire survey of faculty following the election of a collective bargaining agent at the 14 Pennsylvania state colleges. Identifies relationships between faculty choice and influence of internal vs. external governance matters on voting, demographic faculty characteristics, and attitudes toward contending associations, scope of…

The major proposition in this essay is that black politics is moving from the tumultuous politics of idealistic protest to a cautious politics of backlash pragmatism. (Author)

Describes a study which shows that many of the apparent changes in voters' attitudes toward political issues since the 1950s are really due to variations in question wording on survey forms. Journal available from Department of Political Science, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida 32611. (Author/AV)

A teacher's experiences in introducing concepts of democracy and voting to her kindergarten students. (BD)

Reports on a study of people's perceptions of the way in which their voting choices, and those of others, were influenced by media editorial endorsements of candidates. (GW)

School financial elections are won by analyzing what people know and need to know about the ballot issue; developing a ballot issue that is salable; then organizing, planning, financing, communicating, and finally evaluating to see what went right and what went wrong in the campaign. (Author/MLF)