Voices in My Head
Voter Turnout is Low Because Voting is a Hassle. Let’s Fix this.
Voter turnout is low because voting is such a hassle. You’ve heard your relatives, your neighbors, friends say it. You’ve probably said it a few times. The whole voting process is just too much to go through. Registering, learning the names of the candidates, trying to make sense of those complicated issues about propositions and bonds and taxes; it is too confusing and really, who has time? They have a job, maybe two or three, rent or mortgage money to worry about. Voting is just one more thing that will clog their brains with information that they insist they’ll forget the next day. And please don’t talk to them about doing anything besides voting like writing their representative or even worst, attending a council meeting. Anyway, they’ll still complain that voting doesn’t matter.”Politicians will do whatever they want.” We’ve all heard the complaints and no amount of arguing will change the non-voter’s mind. All the complaining might be an exaggeration but maybe we still need to do something more about improving voter turnout.
Voter Turnout Nationally
There are dueling narratives about voter turnout in America. On the one hand, the Pew Research Center headlined stories about turnouts in 2016 and 2018. In 2016, according to Pew, “a record 137.5 million Americans voted in the 2016 presidential election. They cited numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau that voter turnout was 61.4% in 2016. That was great and share similar to the 2012 number but below the 63.6% who voted in 2008. Now, 2018 was a midterm election and not a Presidential one so the comparisons aren’t equal. However, Pew reports that “More than half of U.S. eligible voters cast a ballot in 2018.” According to their analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau, more than 122 million people voted in the 2018 elections, the highest in a midterm election year since 1978. Pew claims the increase was especially among Hispanics and Asians, “making last year’s midterm voters the most racially and ethnically diverse ever.” If that good news wasn’t good enough, the Research Center says the 2018 midterms were the first time since 1982 where voter turnout shot above 50%.
Voter Turnout in California
It’s funny how we jump and down and cheer when we see these numbers. The reality is that voting turnouts are big when there is a Presidential year and when there are controversial city-wide items on the ballot. Otherwise, there’s the second narrative and it isn’t pretty. A Mayoral Primary race like the one in April 2018 will garner 41,415 of 261,577 = 15.83% turnout. Long Beach Council races can capture less than 10%-15% percent turnouts and no one blinks.
Now, a special run-off for California State Senate District 33 is scheduled for June 4, 2019. If the primary in March is a forecaster of what’s to come, well, it’s not going to be pretty. Long Beach Councilperson Lena Gonzalez came out on top of a field of twelve candidates with 31.64% of the vote. (Listen to the recent Palacio Podcast with Gonzalez HERE). Her opponent, Cudahy City Councilman Jack M. Guerrero, came in second with 14% of the vote. Those percentages mask the real turnout numbers. The Los Angeles County Clerk reported that the March voter turnout was 8.34%. Wait, there’s more. The 10,984 votes won by Gonzalez translates into 2.47% of the District’s registered voters. Guerrero only received 4,860 votes or 1.14% of the registered voters. There are 926,972 people living in State Senate District 33, as of the 2010 U.S. Census. I’ll let those numbers sink in. Let’s hope June 4th is better.
Fixing the Turnout
We don’t make it easy for people to vote. Okay, you can register online and you can always vote by mail, but well, that still takes time. All those lists of ballot measures and municipal judges and who’s going to read all that stuff. I hate to be the bearer of bad news but we all must participate (more than just vote) if we’re ever going to stop listening to the whining of people who don’t vote but still have an opinion about everything political. We need to begin treating voting not just as a right but as an obligation.
It should begin in elementary school. Civics needs to be taught in every grade you’re in alongside English/Spanish and Mathematics. There should be field trips to your representatives’ offices, elected officials as speakers, and as you enter High School and Colleges, internships on campaigns and at polling places (Stop with the one-day Tuesday vote day. Weekends and multiple days). As soon as you have a driver’s license and are eighteen (I’m open to lowering the age), you get your voting card. You’re thrown into the system alongside your IRS number and you are compelled to vote or suffer a fine.
Waleed Aly is an Australian columnist, broadcaster and a politics lecturer. In a 2017 op-ed column in the New York Times, Aly called on democracies to adopt compulsory voting. Voting is compulsory in Australia, “Failure to vote at a federal election without a valid and sufficient reason is an offence under section 245 of the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918.” The penalty doesn’t sound burdensome enough. The fine is only $20. Let’s make it more. But compelling people sounds so…unamerican. Oh, grow up. We must have a driver’s license, pay taxes, and make sure we have insurance for our cars and homes and so many other things like wearing seatbelts and…I can go on.
Wait, There’s More
Compelling is not enough. What good is forcing someone to vote if they don’t understand what they’re voting for? Government, education, non-profits, and media have to do a better job at distributing accurate and simple to understand voter information. I don’t mean the slash and burn political ads and door hangers (We really need to outlaw those. Seriously). And do something about social media, damn it.
Let’s federalize elections. I don’t mean they should run them. I mean, let’s create national standards upon which local election boards can run their shows. We take elections seriously and then, we don’t do much to inspire voting and participation beyond election day(s). The government must find a secure and easy way for voters to vote. America should not be content with 50% or 20% or less than 10% voter turnouts. Voting should be an investment by all of us in the future of our democracy. You don’t get to stick a twelve-foot flagpole in your front lawn, act all patriotic like on Independence Day, bitch and moan about those other people’s politics, and then sit out election day. Stop complaining and do something about it.
