Commonwealth Review of Political Science
![Commonwealth Review of Political Science](/assets/md5images/ceff654d2f1d1120919673280d59395c.png)
Abstract
Decades after Kentucky abolished de jure racial distinctions in education, the state legislature asked voters to strip segregationist language from their venerable constitution. Political elites were stunned when a third of the state's voters, and majorities in five countries, rejected the change. However, the prime culprit for Kentucky's 1996 constitutional amendment vote was not white racism, because African-American voters endorsed segregation at rates similar to whites. Rather, the Kentucky vote offers a particularly clear and particularly dramatic example of the limits of ballot-box policy making. It should alert scholars that highly publicized referenda in high-profile states - the focus of much direct-democracy research - may not be representative of how direct democracy usually operates.
Recommended Citation
Voss, D. Stephen
(2017)
"The Phantom Segregationist: Kentucky's 1996 Desegregation Amendment and the Limits of Direct Democracy,"
Commonwealth Review of Political Science: Vol. 4:
No.
1, Article 2.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.61611/2994-0044.1024
Available at:
https://digitalcommons.murraystate.edu/crps/vol4/iss1/2
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