{"id":1404,"date":"2004-03-06T12:45:36","date_gmt":"2004-03-06T16:45:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2004\/03\/06\/voting-in-the-us\/"},"modified":"2004-03-06T12:45:36","modified_gmt":"2004-03-06T16:45:36","slug":"voting-in-the-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2004\/03\/06\/voting-in-the-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Voting in the US"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

I was at a party last night where a couple of the good people there
\nwere advocating that the US needs mandatory voting, like Australia, to
\nboost the number of voters.  (What’s funny is that no one seemed
\nto question why <\/span>it was better
\nto have more voters.  Any good answers out there [by which I mean,
\ndo you have any supportable reasons based on logic, rather than the
\ntypical “It’s just better when more people vote”]?)(<\/p>\n

So I asked a friend who’s much better with American politics than I am
\nwhy we perceive that the voters in the US are so low.  Here’s his
\nresponse:<\/p>\n

\n
When people talk about “low turnout” what they really are talking about is
\ndeclining turnout. I argue that most of the causes of low turnout have to do
\nwith the denominator. When we hear reports about voter turnout, we hear about
\nturnout in the voting age <\/span>population — many of which are excluded from voting
\nfor a variety of reasons, including felony convictions and non-citizenship. If
\nwe look instead at the voting eligible <\/span>population (those that could vote if they
\nwanted to), turnout is much higher and has actually remained pretty stable since
\nthe 1950s. There have still been declines since the turn of the century, but
\nthat has to do more with expansions in the voting eligible population (i.e.,
\nextending the franchise to women and 18 – 21 year olds) than anything
\nelse.<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

If you look comparatively, however, the US does indeed have lower turnout
\nthan most other democracies. No one is really sure about why this is the case.
\nOne argument is that unlike voters in most democracies because of federalism
\nvoters in the US have the opportunity to vote on a very large number of
\nelectoral questions. We vote for local government officials and issues. We vote
\nfor state government officials and issues. We vote for national government
\nofficials. Voters in many other democracies only vote for the national
\ngovernment, which then appoints the local and regional government officials.
\nOther possible explanations include: (a) weak partisanship as opposed to weak
\nparties  — we just don’t get excited about political issues let alone political
\nparties (although that appears to be changing in this election); (b) no
\nrequirement to vote — voting in the US is a choice, but in many other
\ndemocracies there are penalties for not voting in an election; and (c)
\nrestrictions (e.g., residency requirements and registration requirements) that
\nlimit the pool of who is eligible to vote in a given election in the US.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was at a party last night where a couple of the good people there were advocating that the US needs mandatory voting, like Australia, to boost the number of voters.  (What’s funny is that no one seemed to question why it was better to have more voters.  Any good answers out there [by which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politicks"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-mE","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1404\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}