Elevating Participation in American Presidential Elections (Revised, Work in Progress)

Problems with the Voting System

The oft repeated goal of the American voting system is to provide each citizen an equal say in choosing his representatives. In every election, both candidates make a point to tout the continued success of the electoral system and how it represents quintessential American virtues: participation, freedom, choice, democracy. But a quick look at our voting system as compared to the other liberal democracies tells a different story. Voter turnout and registration in the United States remains comparatively lower than that of other Western democracies. Even in the most hotly contested presidential elections, turnout among the voting eligible population hovers around 60%, and in legislative elections with no presidential vote, turnout is around 35-40%. Given the amount of media coverage and money involved a Presidential election, this seems a strange disparity. Western Europe, by contrast, has consistent voter turnout between 75-80%.

Interestingly enough, voter turnout is not necessarily tied to whether a state is a battleground or not. Ohio and Pennsylvania, traditionally considered to be two "battleground" states that see a lot of money and visits by candidates during a cycle, have turnout rates close to or lower than the national average (Ohio had eligible voter turnout of .3% over the national average, while Pennsylvania was 8.6% lower). Some states considered solid states, like Alaska (26.01% swing in favor of one party), Idaho (34.32%) and Vermont (22.36%) have average voter turnout rates 10 percentage points higher than the national average.

To increase voter turnout, we can do two things: 1) increase registration, 2) increase turnout among registered voters.

Possible Solutions

Vote By Mail

In 1998, the state of Oregon instituted a vote by mail system, allowing voters to send in their ballots before election day. In the last six presidential election cycles (2008-1988), the state has had considerably higher turnout among the voting age population than the national average, but this disparity has fluctuated. What has increased is the proportion of registered voters going to the polls. From 1988 to 1996 the percentage of registered Oregon voters actually voting was between 3 and 6 percent higher than the national average. In the three election cycles after 1998, the range was between 10 and 13%, without a corresponding shift in the percentage of voting age Oregonians registered. The state of Washington, which began optional county by county voting by mail in 1993 and now has all but one county using this method, has also seen a gradual increase in the proportion of registered voters participating in the electoral process.

The Oregon system has a number of benefits over the current election day system. It is cheaper and avoids the problems of voter disenfranchisement due to lines or lack of polling places or last minute protests and disruptions at sites. People who would otherwise be too busy or tired to vote on November 4th can vote at their leisure. If the Oregon results could be replicated, it would increase participation among registered voters by 10 million nationwide.

Increasing the Number of Registered Voters

Ultimately, any major increase in participation must address the problem of lax voter registration. Of a voting age population of 225 million, about 78% were registered as of last election. However, low registration and low turnout do not necessarily correlate. For example, Mississippi and West Virginia, with respective voter turnout of -17 and -16.3 percent in the last election, had voter registration rates of 89 and 86 percent.

Of the six southwest states (CA, CO, NM, AZ, TX, NV), four have voter registration under 70%. Despite Arizona's status as an "in play" state (average spread in the last 3 elections 8.41), it has the lowest registered voter percentage of any state at 61%. All are states with a large percentage of legal immigrants, who are less likely to register to vote because of language barriers, unfamiliarity, or too much familiarity with corrupt politics back home. Automatic voter registration upon citizenship would streamline the process for newly minted citizens.

Traditionally, voter registration drives have been the province of the individual parties or non-profit organizations. In particularly close elections voter registration drives will be in full swing. In the early 90s the Clinton Administration passed the "motor voter" act, which lets people automatically vote when they receive a driver's license- unfortunately, many Americans do not have driver's licenses.

Same day registration gives voters the option of registering to vote on the same day as the election. When instituted in North Carolina in 2007, voter registration shot up 5 percent to 91%, though it is unclear whether this increase was due to the new law or to private get out the vote campaigns in anticipation of a hotly contested election.

Automatic registration is popular among most Western nations, and could be accomplished with a system like the Selective Service System which automatically adds citizens onto the voting rolls once they turn 18. This would be the most efficient, but also the most politically unlikely measure.

Why is this a Problem?

If you accept the proposition that our society operates best when its leaders are elected by a representative bloc of voters, than low turnout should be a concern. Turnout is lowest among the bottom quintile of income earners, and is significantly lower among voters with only a high school education. This is a group that already wields less clout because of a reduced ability to donate to political campaigns.

The Interests Opposed to Change

Any reforms that increase the participation of the lower class would be opposed by the wealthy and any politicians reliant on their backing. In the last election cycle, the proportion of voters voting for either party stayed relatively consistent across income bands above $50,000. Below that number, however, votes began to swing toward Barack Obama. People with incomes below $30,000 voted overwhelmingly for the Democrats. The current leadership of the Republican Party, obviously, would not like to see this group elevated to the same participation rate as other income groups for fear they would have to adopt more redistributionist policies or risk being marginalized.

The rhetoric used by the opposition will appeal to voters' sense of patriotism, history, tradition, and individualism. There will be appeals to the mythical "good voter", "why should we change what the responsible, informed voters have been successful at for so long?" If people are too lazy to go down and register to vote, why should the system change to accommodate them?

An obvious strategy to combat that rhetoric would be an appeal towards American traditions of democratic participation- everyone should have a vote, voting is a right and access should be universally guaranteed, etc. Unfortunately, this rhetoric is often ineffective. Americans are worried about voting, sure, but they are often worried about the power of their vote being diluted by "lazy" (read: stupid, uneducated, and poor) voters, or the potential for voter fraud. Perhaps equally as important to Americans is seeing voting as a choice, not a duty. Compulsory voting and automatic registration conjure up images of coercion and rigged balloting.

It might be beneficial to harness the current wave of antagonism towards inefficient government in order to force state governments to enact voter reforms. Vote by mail should be attractive to the elderly and working people, as well as people concerned with government waste or with unintentional voter disenfranchisement in the form of long lines and understaffed polling places. A form of vote by network could be developed to appeal to the youth vote.

Significantly harder would be rallying support for same-day or automatic voter registration. Fears of voter fraud and illegal voting conspiracies permeate each election cycle despite such fraud being rare and localized. Local and state incumbents on both sides of the aisle feed into these fears, worried that higher turnout or easier access to the polling place would upset the order of things. In those southwest states with especially low registration percentages, politicians would fear the addition of large ethnic blocs to the rolls, worried they might spawn candidates of their own.

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Elevating Participation in American Presidential Elections (original w/ comments)

Problems with the Voting System

The oft repeated goal of the American voting system is to provide each citizen an equal say in choosing his representatives. In every election, both candidates make a point to tout the continued success of the electoral system and how it represents quintessential American virtues: participation, freedom, choice, democracy. But a quick look at our voting system as compared to the other liberal democracies tells a different story. Voter turnout and registration in the United States remains comparatively lower than that of other Western democracies. Even in the most hotly contested presidential elections, turnout among the voting eligible population hovers around 60%, and in legislative elections with no presidential vote, turnout is around 40%. Given the amount of media coverage around a Presidential election, this seems a strange phenomenon. Western Europe, by contrast, has consistent voter turnout between 75-80%.

Perhaps the people who do not vote in the United States because they believe politics has nothing to offer them find in European electoral systems, mostly based on proportional representation, something worth voting for?

Sometimes, candidates who win the popular vote do not win the Presidency, as we saw in 2000. Results like these only encourage political parties to pursue a strategy of total war in 10 or 12 states, while ignoring states they consider lost causes or easy wins.

One has nothing to do with the other.

Additionally, the system disenfranchises voters in states considered solidly in one camp or another. If a party knows they will get 50% plus one vote, they have no incentive to campaign in a non-battleground state beyond rousing the base for donations.

Historical Underpinnings

The Electoral College was created at a time when the Founders did not trust the mob to cast informed votes for President. Despite the names on the ballot being for presidential candidates, voters today still vote for slates of electors, who are technically free to cast their ballots for any presidential candidate they choose.

No. The Electoral College is a component of an envisioned system, in which State Legislatures chose both the United States Senate and the Presidential Electors.

By federal statute, Election Day is set for the Tuesday after the first Monday in November because in pre-industrial America, multiple days were required for travel, which could not coincide with the Sabbath or late-week market days. Tuesday is now within the traditional 40-hour, 9-5 work week, and commuters are forced to vote after work. Also, we no longer publicly hold a view that it is unwise for the people to directly elect the president, rendering the main purpose of the Electoral College an anachronism.

No. The main purpose of the Senate and the Electoral College was to give the State Governments a decisive role in the selection of the imperial Federal Government. Even when popular vote elects both the Presidential Electors and the members of the Senate, the voting rules and apportionments of power in both bodies give State polities far more clout than they would have in a more unitary national structure, where the state governments would soon be nothing but regional administrators. All the "anachronism" bullshit fails to understand what the Electoral College does for the state governments made of political party members that would have to agree to abolish it, and who are quite obviously uninterested in doing so.

Possible Solutions

Reform Election Day

Low voter turnout cannot simply be explained by an Electoral College system that encourages parties to concentrate attention and resources on a few battleground states. Even in "high excitement" states like Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Florida, and Ohio, turnout is rarely over 70%. The problem of how to increase voter turnout on days when people are expected to go to work and take their children to school is a not a new one, and the solution is simple, either move Election Day to the first Saturday in November, make it a national holiday, or do both.

You're twenty years late with this suggestion. Vote by mail will take over in mainly places, as in Oregon, eliminating the concept of election day. In the end, which isn't more than on generation off, network-based voting will become the rule, and election day, as a shared moment rather than a deadline, will disappear altogether.

Same-Day or Automatic Registration

Same day registration, where voters can register at the polls, has long been opposed on the grounds that it will encourage voter fraud and increase lines at polling places. A system of automatic national voter registration, similar to the Selective Service System or European systems, would be the most efficient solution. Voter registration is the province of state governments, and so any solution here will need to be instituted state-by-state or by Constitutional amendment.

You don't explain the consequences of the fact that in a two-party system conducting elections in an aristocracy pretending to be a middle-class republic, there is always one party that does not want to expand participation. Under unusual circumstances, this may be the "popular" party. Almost all the time, it will be the party whose policies reflect the desires of the wealthy. Systems of automatic or required participation will always meet with one party's vehement opposition, and will therefore be almost impossible to achieve. Motor Voter, the most sought-after measure of electoral expansion in the Democratic Party's list of possible enfranchisement devices, which was finally achieved during the Clinton Administration, produced a significant increase in registration, but the ultimate participation increase was, as a number of political scientists had predicted on the basis of past similar enfranchisement measures, on the order of 2-3%. Why you don't even mention compulsory voting, which is no longer only an Australian phenomenon, is something of a mystery. Political practicability is either a consideration or it isn't.

The National Popular Vote

The proposal that would engender the most criticism would involve eliminating the Electoral College through a constitutional amendment, or convincing enough states to sign legislation awarding all of their votes to the candidate with the most popular votes. This would force candidates to campaign nationally, widening people's direct exposure to national politics. A few states have already passed laws requiring the electors to cast their ballots for the winner of the presidential popular vote, and once enough states pass these laws they will go into effect.

First, there's no particular reason to isolate participation in presidential elections from participation in other elections, which means the conflation of the particular electoral machinery of that one selection and all other political participation issues is particularly confusing. In revision, the presidential election material should either be what the essay is about, or it should be removed. If we are actually talking about the mechanisms of presidential elections, you have it exactly backwards. Elimination of the Electoral College would make rural America a presidential wasteland. Elections would be fought in the high-population areas on the two coasts, the industrial cities of the heartland, and the high-population rings of suburbs that surround the continental urban cores. It's difficult to explain what would happen in such a system, because we are also about to undergo the melting of television into the net, which is going to have immensely far-reaching and quite independent effects on American electoral politics. If your idea of "direct exposure" is "personal interaction between voter and political process," direct exposure is about to increase by half an order of magnitude. If it means "personal interaction between the voter and the candidate," nothing of the sort can or will happen.

The Interests Opposed to Change

The rhetoric used by the opposition will appeal to voters' sense of patriotism, history, tradition, and individualism. There will be appeals to the Founding Fathers "if the Electoral College was good enough for them, why isn't it good enough for you?" and to the mythical "good voter", "why should we change what the responsible, informed voters have been successful at for so long?" This rhetoric, however, is not fundamentally different than the rhetoric always used to stifle reform. What will allow for real change in the system is to understand the interests that will oppose change.

So why didn't you explain them?

The national parties have been fighting the same familiar, straightforward battles for decades. With a national popular vote, however, the side that wins will not only need to convince independents, but also increase turnout in high-population states or states where they already have a strong base. This will require many different messages for different kinds of voters. A New England Republican, after all, is a different breed than a Texas Republican. Factionalism that would normally be present only during the primaries would spill over into the general election, as voting for third party candidates is now a viable option.

No, this is not good analysis at all. Because only one person can be elected president, minor party candidates will never be a good option. How platforms would change in a national popular vote is straightforward enough: the parties would divide around the urban/suburban distinctions that roughly bisect the available voters, with more votes in the suburbs and more deactivated voters in the urban cores. Regional message modulation would be little different than it is now, except for the absence of the components that are basically where Dick Cheney campaigned in 2004, and where—given the closeness of the vote—the presidential election in Ohio (which decided the national election) was decided. In a nationalized election, no one would have bothered with the farmers anywhere. Not even in Iowa.

Five or six states can consistently be classified as battleground states with another 10 or so "on the bubble." These states understand the power they wield in national elections.

Yes, and that would be true in national popular elections too, because those states also produce an high numbers of votes overall, and winning the national election without producing large margins in those states would be hard. Of course, Democrats would have to spend more time in California and New York, and Republicans would have to spend more time in suburbs with lots of aging white people all over the place.

Local politicians of both parties know that zealous advocacy for a national candidate on the local level can translate into rewards when the party comes into power. Powerful politicians from these states understand that they are in high demand when it comes time to select a Vice President.

As proven vote-getters in high-population regions always would be. Unless the States themselves were dissolved, these would be state politicians.

These states will be vehemently opposed to any election reforms that dilute the extraordinary pull they have in presidential elections. Any reforms that increase the participation of the lower class, who have the lowest turnout of any socioeconomic group, would be opposed by corporate interests and any politicians reliant on their backing.

Not "corporate interests." Rich people.

-- By JonathanWaisnor - 17 Feb 2010