es, and are responsible for putting forward and supporting candidates for most local offices. State legislatures are also organized along bi-partisan lines that echo the arrangements of the Congress in most respects.The local organizations also have a major effect on politics at all levels up the organizational ladder. Although campaigns at the state and federal level tend to be money-driven and professionally run candidates still require extensive support from local party organizations. Labor-intensive "field work" such as canvassing voters, leafleting, raising funds, getting out the vote, and gathering information on voters is organized at precinct, city, county, and state levels. These efforts, which can aid party politicians at all levels, are most effective at different levels of the organization. Local committees are especially effective in collecting voter information, voter registration, and getting out the vote. State committees were effective fund raisers and also very effective in mobilizing voters. Candidates for congress look up the organizational ladder to the national committees for assistance "in areas of campaigning requiring technical expertise, in-depth research, or connections with political action committees, political consultants, and other Washington operatives"(Herrnson 158).Aside from their important roles in the management of politics at every level, the fact that grassroots party organizations enfranchise new voters, get voters out to the polls, and involve volunteers means that the parties are good for democracy in the broadest sense. Such active workers will feel that they are more directly involved in the democratic process--and may convey this feeling to some voters. Yet the inevitable problem of a party-based system is that the great majority of voters feel that their particular needs are not met by any one party. The distance between the processes of government and the individual citizen often...
