To a degree unique among democracies, the United States has always placed responsibility for running national elections in the hands of county, city, and town officials. <i>The Way We Vote</i> explores the causes and consequences of America's localized voting system, explaining its historical development and its impact on American popular sovereignty and democratic equality.<p>The book shows that local electoral variation has endured through dramatic changes in American political and constitutional structure, and that such variation is the product of a clear, repeated developmental pattern, not simple neglect or public ignorance. Legal materials, statutes and Congressional debates, state constitutional-convention proceedings, and the records of contested Congressional elections illuminate a long record of federal and state intervention in American electoral mechanics. Lawmakers have always understood that a certain level of disorder characterizes U.S. national elections, and have responded by exercising their authority over suffrage practices--but only in limited ways, effectively helping to construct our triply-governed electoral system.