Keeping Workers Off the Ballot: How Democracy Undermines Working-Class Representation

Why the underrepresentation of the working class in political office is an inevitable side effect of electoral democracy itselfWhy do so few working-class people go on to hold elected office?In the average democracy, working-class jobs make up about seventy percent of occupations, but only two percent of national legislators come from working-class jobs.In Keeping Workers Off the Ballot, Nicholas Carnes and Noam Lupu show that this disparity is not because working-class people are less appealing to voters, less interested in running, or less qualified. And the problem isn’t limited to certain countries, campaign finance regimes, or electoral systems.Carnes and Lupu argue that it is the nature of elections themselves that keep workers off our ballots and out of office. Carnes and Lupu point to two inherent features of elections that discourage working-class candidates throughout democracies across the globe.Running for office naturally involves taking on significant personal burdens-giv