Politics have no relation to morals.
-Niccolo Machiavelli

Political manipulation has been around for a long time, from the Roman Senate, through the Constitutional Convention of 1787, to the U.S. Congress, state, and local governments. Today’s voters are having to deal with obstacles to voting (voter suppression), including: early voting, photo ID laws, registration restrictions, voter roll purges, Congressional redistricting, robocalling, and gerrymandering. Other examples of political manipulation include: Lincoln at Freeport (the Lincoln-Douglas debate on slavery); N.Y. Senator Chauncey DePew and manipulating the passage of the 17th Amendment; Gouverneur Morris at the Philadelphia Convention; camouflaging the gerrymander; Pliny the Younger on Parliamentarian law; trading votes at the Constitutional Convention; and Reed and Cannon (intentional abuse of Parliamentary procedures), to name but a few examples.
Teaching formats will include lecture, discussion and debate, small group work, film, and visual aids. Students are encouraged to bring in their favorite manipulation news stories, political cartoons, and personal experiences to share with the class. The inspiration for this course is William H. Riker’s The Art of Political Manipulation. We will be reading parts of Machiavelli’s The Prince.