U.S. elections: what happens if nobody turns up to vote?

Questions on Democratic Politics

U.S. elections: what happens if nobody turns up to vote?

In this post, I would like to argue the causes of the low, and since 1960 continuously lower turnout at the elections of the United States. Many would blame the electoral system for this, but here I will support that the electoral system gives only one reason to voters to not to turn up at elections and give a vote. There are several reasons within the society: division by political, ethnic, economic, wealth differences, the electoral and voting system comes above these, what more, I also say that politicians and policymakers promote and deepen this distribution and therefore result the lower turnout at every election.

First of all, let us look at the society’s differences apart from politics: people are divided into different states with different identity (one state believes in death penalty, free gun holding, gay marriage, while other states do not believe in these), but most importantly, within these states people are divided according to their salary, their property, their economic status. Where democracy (political equality) is provided, by default it is expected to provide economic equality as well. Although, in states like the US inequality has been deeply written into the society history (in case of women, non-whites, slavery), it cannot be removed like that. In the US universal suffrage did not resulted a massive redistribution, as well as in other states where inequalities were traditionally promoted. Economically poorer citizens then, the victims of this supported inequality are less likely to vote. This is one social factor, but we can look at the results of voters by age or by race, the latter supports the idea of the promotion of inequality within the society (‘non-whites are slaves’ through history).

Secondly, to explain this phenomenon in the turnout we have to look at the politicians’ logic as well. As poorer people do not attend elections, do not give votes, they are the last to matter in policy making, as they are not the ones who give votes, not the ones who have to be convinced to give the vote to the particular party or candidate. Therefore, the poorest will be the less relevant in any political process. Policies are usually set up for middle and upper classes, as they are who vote, the sense of political effectiveness. In addition to this, if poor are not represented, they are even more likely to not vote and also, there is a standard between voters to ignore what policies favour them, after the 2001-2003 tax cuts caused a massive wealth down-top. Since then people fail to bring relevant values to bear in formatting their policy preferences, there is a misconnection between egalitarian sentiments and concrete policy preferences.

Thirdly then, after explaining how social and economic differences can affect the number of voters, then based on this how politicians exclude those poorer, non-white, or younger citizens within policymaking, and also how the lack of interest in policies increases,  I will show the circumstance of voting, the voting process and then finally, the electoral system itself.

In the US registering to be able to vote at all requires effort, registration is not automatic at the age of 21, people need to get registered. This process was complicated, it has been modified to make it easier, but still it is an administration process which some cannot have time for if they need to work in order to keep up the household and the family. Then, even if they are registered, the day of election usually takes place on a weekday, not given as a holiday, which also makes it difficult to vote for the former reason (people have school or work). These are now two steps obstructing the actual voting. In my view, both of these could be simply avoided by an automatic registration and a holiday or weekend day voting day. But would that be in the interest of the politicians or the candidates? We cannot know.

Then, as I mentioned, the electoral system. Those, who have potential to get registered and actually go to the elections, now have only very limited options: they can only choose out of two parties’ (Republican and Democrat) two individual candidates. This limited public choice itself may question democracy, vote cannot be rational in such a limited offer of choice, but people rather feel it does not worth it to go and vote because one candidate wins, the other’s votes all get ‘wasted’, so their vote could be a waste of time and expenses (travelling). Apart from the limited choice and too much wasted votes, the electoral system is as follows: each member state elects population related number of electorates plus two senators. Each state is represented by a number of electorates in the Electoral College. When the particular member-state votes on presidential election, no matter if within the state a candidate only won with 51% majority, it takes all the votes of all the electorates of that state in the College. 270 of these electorate votes are needed in order to win, and in this system, the overall popular votes can favour one candidate while the electoral votes make the other as a winner. Therefore, one could argue, the votes of the voters of the United States as one, do not matter in the sense of appointing a president.

In a conclusion, I insist on my statement that the electoral system itself is not the cause of the low turnout at US elections- I say it based on my study, showing that due to economic inequality and the complex process of being able to vote and voting does not allow many in the society to be able to vote. They are then excluded by policymakers in policymaking, they are less and less represented, therefore more and more separated from voting. Besides, age and race are also relevant factors, but not less the limited choice in vote (which makes voters think their vote is worthless) and the electoral system’s unfair president-appointing.

To solve the problem of continuous lower turnout at US elections – which at a critical level could question democracy of the US – as I said, the registration could be automatic, the voting day could be a holiday but also, if poorer people turn up at election to vote, they will need to be more represented, politicians would need their votes too. Finally, at the presidential election the results could be modified in the event of different popular vote results from electoral vote result. I do not say that the whole system should be changed, only in the event of questionable results. In a democracy, how can be one the legally accepted president who did not get an overall majority from the citizens?

So, even though I see the electoral system is a highly relevant cause, the problem has many more roots than just the electoral system itself, and these should be improved with simple changes.