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Back
to Great Debates
Why
don't Americans vote?
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For more than a quarter
century participation in American elections has declined.
In 1988, just 50 percent of potential voters bothered to
cast votes in a Presidential election--the lowest voter
participation rate since 1824. As a result, the United States
has by far the lowest voter turnout of any western society.
It wasn't always so. As
recently as 1960, 72.8 percent of the electorate cast ballots
in a Presidential election. And back in the mid-nineteenth
century, voter participation rates of more than 80 percent
were common occurrences.
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Why don't Americans vote? Is it
because American voters are generally content with the status
quo? Or because of legal obstacles that obstruct participation?
Or is it due to the absence of candidates who might mobilize the
disaffected voters by addressing their interests? The first point
that needs to be made is that the decline in voter turnout did
not emerge overnight; it has been a longterm development. It began
during the late nineteenth century and was only temporarily reversed
during the 1930s and 1940s.
A second point that emerges out
of the study of American voting patterns is that as voter participation
rates have dropped, class differences (and age differences) in
voter turnout have increased. The typical voter today is relatively
well off financially and over fifty years of age. Better educated,
higher earning Americans vote at 70-80 percent levels, while less
than two-fifths of the working class bother to vote--a forty percent
gap.
Class differences in voter participation
have partisan political implications. At the highest end of the
income distribution, Republican votes outnumber Democratic votes
by as much as 5-to-1, while the lowest income voters tend to vote
overwhelmingly Democratic.
So why don't Americans vote? Legal
impediments, some say. When voter registration was first instituted
at the turn of the century, participation dropped by about ten
percent. The overwhelming majority of registered voters go to
the polls--85 to 90 percent. So, according to this view, easing
registration requirements should increase voter turnout.
Weak political stimuli, say others.
Voter participation began its long-term slide during the period
between 1896 and 1930, a period when the Democratic party dominated
the "Solid South" and the Republican party dominated
the Northeast. Voting Republican in the South or Democratic in
many Northern states had little impact, and voter participation
flagged.
During the Great Depression, voter
turnout increased sharply as the two parties sparred over Franklin
Roosevelt's New Deal. Economic hardship and the rise of labor
unions helped to mobilize voters. The electorate grew increasingly
polarized along class lines, with the Democratic share of the
working class vote rising sharply and the Republican share of
the upper class vote climbing.
Since 1960, voter participation
has again fallen, particularly among lower class voters. Why?
Many explanations have been advanced, ranging from negative campaigning
to the decline of party organizations, the unwillingness of the
major parties to address issues of concern to lower class voters,
growing estrangement from politics traceable to the Vietnam war
and political scandals such as Watergate, and the increasing conservatism
of the mainstream of the Democratic party.
Questions to
think about:
1. How would
you explain trends in voter participation in the United States?
2. How would
you reverse the trend toward declining voter turnout?
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