United States Election Project<\/a> calculates a turnout ratio based on the voting-eligible population, which produces a rate of 58.2% for 2012, It\u2019s also the case that, as a percent of registered voters, the turnout rate looks a lot better: \u00a084.3% of registered voters voted, and that ratio puts the U.S. in 7th place in the OECD. \u00a0But, at the same time, as Pew reports, the U.S. is unusual in having a voter registration process in the first place; it\u2019s far more typical in the OECD that voters are simply automatically registered upon reaching adulthood, if citizens. \u00a0As a result, again according to Pew, only about 70% of the voting-eligible population is registered.<\/p>\nIt\u2019s interesting that the three countries with voter turnout lower than the U.S. are not corrupt backwaters just barely eligible for OECD status: \u00a0it\u2019s Japan, Chile, and Switzerland. \u00a0Switzerland, in fact, has the lowest turnout of all, at 40% of the voting-age population, and 49.1% of registered voters.<\/p>\n
But, really, would we, as a country, truly be better off with high voter turnout?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s conventional wisdom that Democrats benefit from high turnout because their constituency (that is, the poor) is, on average, less likely to vote, so that if they can get more of these marginal voters to the polls, they\u2019ll vote based simply on an attachment to the Democratic Party, and pull the straight-ticket lever. \u00a0And there\u2019s the old saying that Republicans will win on rainy bad-weather days because they\u2019re more dedicated to voting. \u00a0But at the same time, unions (and Democratic Party Machines) are (or were?) known for massive Get-Out-The-Vote efforts, weren\u2019t they, in which the voters themselves had little idea of the candidates except that the ward heeler told them what to do?<\/p>\n
There was also, in 2008, a certain amount of patting-themselves-on-the-back among Democrats, that they had a candidate in Barack Obama who so inspired the electorate as to boost turnout levels \u2014\u00a0though by only 1.5 percentage points per both these sources.<\/p>\n
But look at Donald Trump. \u00a0He\u2019s inspiring record-high turnouts at the primaries he\u2019s contested so far. \u00a0For Americans who don\u2019t pay attention to politics, he\u2019s brought about excitement, with his promise to \u201cmake America great again.\u201d \u00a0And this marginal electorate doesn\u2019t seem too concerned about his actual ability, or lack thereof, to do what he promises, nor do they seem to care much about Trump University.<\/p>\n
And look at Bernie Sanders. \u00a0He\u2019s getting lots of young people excited about the election \u2014 who, again, seem rather uninterested in whether his promises (free college! \u00a0single-payer healthcare! \u00a0$15\/hr minimum wage!, etc.) are actually implementable without destroying the American economy.<\/p>\n
Now, I suspect that most of my readers, however much you might like to line up on one side of the political spectrum or another, also recognize that there are very few issues where the answer is black and white. \u00a0Public policy is complex and, with pretty much any issue, there are trade-offs, rather than simple one-size-fits-all solutions. \u00a0Promises have to be paid for, and, no, you can\u2019t just fund your wish list by making the wealthy \u201cpay their fair share.\u201d<\/p>\n
Which means that, while anyone who wishes to vote should not have impediments in their way (by which I mean issues of voting times and locations, and sufficient voting booths and poll workers to limit lines),\u00a0I simply don\u2019t see that we\u2019re well served by high voter turnout, among an uneducated and indifferent electorate, for its own sake.<\/p>\n
Image: \u00a0from Wikimedia Commons,\u00a0https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Voting_United_States.jpg;\u00a0By Tom Arthur from Orange, CA, United States (vote for better tape) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/2.0)]<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In a 2015 Pew comparison of OECD countries, the United States ranked 4th from bottom among 34 developed-world countries, with 53.6% of the voting-age population having voted in 2012. \u00a0Wikipedia reports this as 54.9% (I can\u2019t identify any particular reason for the discrepancy), a\u00a0modest up-tick from the modern-day record low of 49% in 1996, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":3995,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[273,325,331],"class_list":["post-3994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-sanders","tag-trump","tag-voter-turnout"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a><\/p>\n