Boosts in voter turnout, any predictions on what else could boost the rates in the future

Politics & Elections
1

For the purposes of this thread, when I talk about voter turnout I’m talking about the percentage of voters compared to the total human population in the US, not the turnout of eligible voters or registered voters since in the 18th century the only people who were eligible voters were property owning, tax paying white men over age 21. Women, non-whites, those under 21, people who didn’t pay taxes and own property, etc. weren’t even eligible to vote.

I saw an interesting graph on wikipedia which covered voter turnout as a percentage of the total human population of the US from 1788 to 2012.

In it, there were 2 big boosts in voter turnout. The first was in the early 1800s. Before that only property owning, tax paying white men over age 21 could vote. Then they changed it so that you only had to be a white man over 21, you no longer had to own property or pay taxes. That boosted turnout.

Second major boost was in the early 1900s when womens suffrage doubled the voter turnout in America.

over the years, voter turnout as a % of total US population has grown from about 2% in 1788 to nearly 43% in 2008.

There was a decline in the late 19th century due to disillusionment, suppression of voter turnout among poor whites and jim crow. Giving blacks the right to vote didn’t make a huge increase in voter turnout (since blacks are only about 10-13% of Americans I guess that isn’t surprising). Also lowering the voting age to 18 in 1970 didn’t make much difference either.

But overall, what future changes could increase the number up from 40%?

I don’t think the voter age will go much lower. It may go to 16, but probably not much lower than that.

As it stands the requirements to vote in the US seem to be you have to be a human being, age 18+, and not currently be in prison, and be mentally competent to vote (so not severely mentally ill or retarded). The % of the total population who are eligible to vote is roughly 75% of the total population. There were about 320 million Americans in 2012 and about 250 million eligible voters among thtem.

The vast majority of those 25% who are not eligible to vote are not eligible due to being under 18.

I think large scale vote by mail or voting online could boost turnout numbers in the future, but probably not by much. I’m guessing if that is done successfully the voter turnout may go up to 55% or so.

Maybe in the future (and I know this may sound dumb now) if its found that some animals are cognitively capable of human level thought and we develop the tools to communicate with them, I wonder if some animals voting could become a thing.

I doubt the mentally defective will be given the right to vote anytime soon.

2

Here’s a link with a chart by turnout as a percent of voting age population since 1828, with turnout as a percentage of voting eligible population since 1980 included as well. I think that those two numbers are more important than population as whole, since as you mention the franchise is unlikely to be extended to those under 18, and almost certainly not those under 16.

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/voter-turnout-in-presidential-elections

It looks like the 80s and 90s had lower turnout, in the mid 50% range by VEP, with an increase since 2004 up to the low 60% range. My guess is that this increase is due to the increased partisanship we’ve seen since 2000. As for what would increase it further, my hypothesis is that it takes having a candidate that is particularly well liked or hated to get people to turn out.

3

According to the piece in fivethirtyeight today, two big reasons why people don’t vote are (1) feeling their vote doesn’t matter and (2) it’s inconvenient and time consuming.

As for the first, we might find fault with the Electoral College, where votes for president don’t really count very much in almost 40 states. But will voters with that kind of rationalization change their minds if everyone’s vote is only one of 60-70 million instead? I go back and forth on this in my own mind.

As for the second, Republicans certainly believe that making voting inconvenient matters and they consider it a feature, not a bug. However, it’s pretty clear to me that we’ve now reached a tipping point – Republicans can’t suppress as many votes as they motivate people pissed off by their actions to vote against them. Georgia and Texas, among the worst offenders in ease of voting, may not turn blue this year but the numbers are marching against them and they won’t be able to stem the tide when their state houses eventually turn Democrat. I’m predicting that this happens permanently in '28.

4

One thing that could encourage more people to vote is to stop trying to make it hard. I am astonished reading that people are waiting in line for hours to vote. When I vote in any election in Canada there have been at most a half dozen people ahead of my leading to a 10 minute wait.

I have a friend who was living in Ohio in 2000. Oberlin, actually, although he had previously lived in Cleveland for 4 decades. He told me that right before the election, the state moved a raft of voting machines from black neighborhoods to rural areas where they were not needed. He also claimed that some people in Cleveland had to wait till midnight to vote because the line was so long. In my friend’s opinion it was in Ohio, not Florida, that the election was stolen.

All this crap about voter ID, too few polling stations and so on is there to prevent voting by the wrong people. Make registration automatic, make voting easy, you will get larger turnout.

Another reason the lines are so long is the large ballots with votes for dog catcher and detailed propositions that ought to be handled by legislatures. When I vote in Canada, I am mostly voting for one office (or at most two, mayor and councilman) and it takes me all of 30 seconds to fill in my ballot.

5

To be fair…right now people are going to their county Board of Elections to vote. In my county in Ohio that’s about 300,000 registered voters who can vote early in one single location. On election day, I vote in my city, which has 5 polling places for 12,000 people. I can’t say I’ve ever had to wait in line (I also am able to vote during the day, not during peak hours).

But yes there are places in the US where waiting in line to vote on election day is a problem. But looking at what’s going on right now with early voting does not necessarily represent that problem.

6

What’s happening now with early voting is that people are waiting in lines for up to 10 hours. How is that not a problem?

Remember that those long lines are almost always in large cities where the number of polling places has been deliberately limited to cut down on Democratic voting. That might not be a problem in a rural Ohio county, but it’s the number one voting problem nationwide.

7

I think this would clearly increase turnout. There have been multiple elections in which my ballot in MO contains not a single competitive race. This year I do happen to have a competitive State Senate race and a US House race that might be close, but that’s actually pretty rare. I do vote every time, but I could totally see somebody not bothering if they aren’t tuned in to regional politics and know that their Presidential vote is a dead letter.

You can sort of see that in the VEP map here: Voter turnout | MIT Election Lab

I didn’t sort or do a deep analysis, but at a glance it certainly appears turnout is higher in “purple” states than in deep red or blue ones. And the text has this quote:

8

Yes, I’ve heard that. By contrast, my California ballot just now had 9 offices and 26 propositions to vote on.

9

That’s a pretty compelling argument, thanks.

10

I dunno, I’d consider about 30% of the electorate to be mentally defective . :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

11

I voted in what is most decidedly not a rural county, as it contains Cincinnati in it.

The first couple of days were apparently pretty crazy, but I went the second week, and had virtually no line.

12

How is that “fair”? Only 1 advance poll for 300,000 people? That’s terrible!

We just had a provincial election. Our largest city has a population of 246,000, so on par with that county. There were 39 separate advance polls in the city, with each electoral division in the city having at least 2 advance polls, some with 3 or 4. That averages to 1 advance poll for every 6,307 residents, distributed across the entire city, making it easy to vote.

The only line-up I saw at an advance poll was about 8 people outside, and that was because of covid precautions, only letting a few voters in at a time.

13

One more obvious one: registration. Is that necessary?

For any election that takes place here in the Netherlands, I get an invitation to vote in the mail. That card plus any kind of ID (which you have to have anyway) gets you a ballot.

Of course, nver have waited more than 5 minutes at the actual polling station.

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That’s why I try to encourage people to vote by telling them to vote locally. Sure, your vote gets drown out in the presidential races, but on your school board, your town/city council? Those have much smaller vote tallies, where often one wins by less than a hundred votes.

These positions also have much more of a direct impact on your life. Trump is not going to fill that pothole in front of your driveway, or plow the streets in the winter, or set the curriculum and budget for your local school district.

If we can encourage people to think locally, to vote locally, that would boost the rates not only in presidential years, but for mid terms and odd years (which is when a whole lot of this stuff is scheduled) as well.

15

Agreed. Canada has voter registration, but it’s done on our tax form. Tick the box to register, and your name goes on the federal and provincial voters’ lists.

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My county has over 800,000 residents in it, only one early voting location. There was not much of a line when I went to vote.

But, not everyone has to go on the same day, like election day.

Election day is when there are polling places all over the place, though not necessarily distributed as fairly and evenly as they should be. My city only has 11,000 residents, and 8 precincts, so a bit over a thousand per.

17

How far is the single voting location from the average voter? Is it a major drive? Good public transit?

The closest advance poll for me was a 10 minute walk.

18

Is it necessary? Probably not. But, bear in mind that, in the U.S.:

  • Elections are run by the individual states, not the Federal government, and each state has a fair amount of leeway in the specifics of how they adminster voting
  • We don’t have a national ID card in the U.S. Drivers’ licenses are the typical de facto ID card that’s used, but again, those are issued by the individual states, and not everyone has one. Only about 40% of Americans have a valid U.S. passport, and, depending on which study you look at, somewhere between 4% and 11% of voting-age Americans do not have a current government-issued photo ID (the percentage is substantially higher among African-Americans).
  • As has already been noted, we also, unfortunately, have a long and embarrassing tradition of making it difficult for certain people to vote in this country.
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They did move it from downtown Cincinnati to a much more central location, which was nice for me, maybe not for the residents of Cincinnati, but it is in an area that does get pretty good public transit service. Residents of Cincinnati would have had little trouble finding a bus route to get there.

Much of the rest of the county doesn’t have all that great a public transit service. I live right on the outskirts of the county, (I could hit two other counties with a well thrown rock), and would not have been able to get there easily without a car.

Keep in mind, I am not arguing that it couldn’t be better. I was just pointing out that the 10 hour lines thing was not really a typical occurrence.

20

Your personal experience is irrelevant to whether 10 hour lines are typical or not.

The point being made is that in many places hours-long lines are typical and they are created deliberately to suppress voting. That is a problem, no matter what your experience is.