According to news reports, voter turnout in this election was close to 60%. That’s higher than it’s been since, I think, 1960, but it’s still disappointing. Despite all the massive voter-registration drives and get-out-the-vote drives by both parties and countless nonparty organizations and a widespread meme that this was the most crucial election in living memory, four out of ten Americans eligible to vote did not go to the polls. Who are those four? Are there any studies of what are their demographic characteristics, what social classes they come from, what generations they come from, what (if any) their politics are?
Perhaps this belongs in GQ, as I’m asking a factual question, not framing an issue for debate. But it’s so political in nature that it’s bound to be moved to GD eventually, so I might as well start it here.
I voted, but wasn’t too excited about it. The only reason I voted is out of habit- I can’t recall missing any election since turning 18. Neither major presidential candidate appealled to me, and the Lib candidate is a bit nuttier than most. My state rep was unopposed, and my US rep might as well have been. There was no senate race (state or US), and most of the downballot races were unopposed judge races. The only candidate I was going to vote for was for Sheriff- it was for a guy I’d met through some charity work (he lost to the hand picked successor of the departing sheriff).
The plural of anecdote is not data, but I know quite a few young men, and none of them under 30 voted. Some of them even work at a liquor store, so they had the day off. Some of them are registered (I suspect at girlfriendly pressure at some past point) and have never voted.
For what it’s worth, none of them are college graduates and one has a GED. None of them were strident nonvoters, in fact they seemed kind of embarassed about it. Not embarassed enough to spend ten minutes of their time voting, of course. And they all had opinions, they just didn’t vote. (Well, they’d have all gone for Bush, so it’s true that I didn’t try as hard as I might have. Said “you should go” but didn’t offer a ride. I didn’t get the feeling they would have taken me up on it, though.)
I just didn’t see the feeling that “voting is a right, a privelege, and a duty” in these guys that I see from my educated female friends and from these guys’ older equivalents. Hell, Mr. GED’s dad came over from Cuba on a freaking raft and his son dosen’t bother to vote! I don’t get it. But I wouldn’t be surprised if that pattern - the vaugely embarassed young uneducated voter - was common.
Who’s not voting? According to the news last night, that’d be 83% of people 18-29. I can’t really help you pinpoint why so many people in my age group are non-voters, since I don’t know anyone who didn’t vote. (I do know a person who voted for the first time this week who is in his late 20s, though) I too wonder if education is part of it, since everyone I know in that age range has at least some post-secondary education under their belts.
While canvassing, every unregistered voter I ran into was a woman.
A couple were middle aged/old, but most of them were young. Just yesterday I was talking to a girl in her 20’s who says she doesn’t vote because “my little opinion doesn’t matter.”
My grandmother was born at a time when women weren’t allowed to vote. Okay, she was 2 when the 19th Amendment was passed, but still. You would think that women would be pretty rabid about their right to vote, considering it hasn’t been very long that we’ve had it.
From now on I am going to get a registration form for every unregistered female that I know, and promise to take it to the courthouse for them.
Good question. The population of the United States is 293 million (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_states_of_america). If we assume 20% of those are under 18, that leaves 234.4 million adults. How many of those are noncitizens or convicts or otherwise ineligible to vote, I couldn’t say. In any case, about 59 million turned out to vote for Bush and 58 million for Kerry, according to the official tallies; so only 117 million voted, or roughly half of those eligible, if we assume all 234.4 million are eligible.
You’d probably get better turnouts if you made it easier for people to vote. You have to take a form to a COURTHOUSE just to register? Jesus.
Here, I showed up at the polling place with my driver’s license and a birth certificate. I was registered on the spot and handed a ballot. Why not just do it that way?
A lot of “registered voters” aren’t really. When people move or die, they don’t notify the secretary of state that they should be taken off the roles. They do register in their new jurisdiction (except the dead ones), but that doesn’t generate a “remove from the other roles” transaction.
Are you required to notify the supervisor of elections when you change your address? In the U.S., you can’t vote unless your current address is the same as your registration address, and if it’s not you have to update your information by a certain deadline – usually 60 days before the election.
Here in NJ, you can register at the same place you get your driver’s license. You can go to your town hall. In fact, at the appropriate time of year, there are often people from political parties and the League of Women Voters with registration forms outside the supermarket who will sign you up right then and there. It’s very easy to register to vote.
In my experience, a lot of the people who don’t vote and/or who don’t even register are by their own admission uninformed and uninvolved, so it’s probably just as well if they don’t.
Perhaps they were just waiting 'til November 3rd (according to a 20/20 special last night, fliers were circulated in some minority neighbourhoods telling people that, due to the overwhelming projected voter turnout, voting would be extended an extra day).
The statement was roughly " Despite the get out the vote efforts by Kerry supporters only 17% of people ages 18-29 voted in this election, and of those that voted 45% of them voted for Bush." It was on the WB-Boston’s news, so I’m not sure that I’ll be able to find a link that says the same thing, since the local stations don’t tend to post their stories, unfortunately.
FWIW, the biggest flaming, conspiracy-loving liberal I knew didn’t vote. He said his vote wouldn’t count–he said his grandmother and mother taught them that votes don’t count. So maybe conspiracy lovers tend to fall for the “your vote doesn’t count, the Illuminati do all the counting” schtick?
