The Privilege to Vote: Why Democracy Is in Trouble

Philosophically and legally, all law abiding citizens have the right to vote.In practice though, it is a privilege to be a voter. The right to vote assumes that everyone has free access to casting a vote, possesses the same knowledge of how, when, and where to vote, and believes that voting is fundamentally important or even patriotic to do. I will try to demonstrate that, while all of these things are worth striving for, the truth is voter turnout has some interesting trends that help to make my point.

As everyone who follows voter ID (VID) laws is likely aware, the more hoops that you put in front of a person to vote, the less likely it is that he ir she will do so. In fact, while proponents of VID laws stress it is to protect the sanctity of the election, it serves more to disenfranchise voters largely across accessibility and economic lines. Make registration time consuming or documentation intensive, less people register. Wired points out that of 3.6% of white people lack the "approved" credentials to vote while 7.5% of black people did. With regard to disability, according to American Association of People with Disabilities, voter registration was 2% lower for those with disabilities than for others and voter turnout for those with disabilities (who make up 1/6 of all voters) was 6% lower than among all other voters. Whether this is attributable to VID or other variables is speculative.

Secondly, information about when and where to vote is often attached to communications and how and to whom things are communicated. Many election boards have adopted state-wide voter information systems that work for those with smartphones and computers, but are not helpful for those who don't. Canvassing for votes tends to be much higher in certain precincts than others, typically high minority precincts, so again, another means of communicating information is not there.Also, canvassing has a very small impact on voting behavior. As Alan Gerber opined in the NY Times, "When the findings of 51 canvassing experiments were pooled together, the results showed that a successful effort to contact a voter produces a 4.3 percentage point increase in the probability the voter will cast a ballot. But this overstates the impact of the intervention: Typically, when a campaign canvasses a neighborhood, most door knocks go unanswered. If a standard canvassing effort reaches only 25 percent of the intended targets, then the overall effect on the target group’s turnout is just 1 percentage point. An increase of this size could make the difference in a close election, but it suggests that even a huge canvassing outreach would have a small effect on turnout."

Lastly, many people choose not to vote for many reasons, but chief among them is the value they see in doing so. A lot of my progressive friends like early voting. However, studies have shown that early voting actually may lead to decreased voting numbers. In addition voting may vary by how diverse the district is. A study by a University of Indiana researcher showed these interesting results:

• Having a political candidate of the same race or ethnicity on the ballot does not, by itself, prompt a larger voter turnout among minority groups.
• Turnout is often greater for minority voters when they live in a congressional district where their racial or ethnic group represents the majority of the citizen voting-age population (CVAP). For black and Hispanic voters specifically, turnouts are higher when each group makes up a larger portion of the electorate – regardless of the race of the candidates listed on the ballot.
• When no black congressional candidate is on the ballot, the general-election turnout for black voters is, on average, 40 percent in a district where black people make up 10 percent of the citizen voting-age population. The turnout is considerably higher — an average of 49.3 percent  — in a district where black people are 50 percent of the voting-age population.
• In the absence of a Hispanic candidate, the general-election turnout for Hispanic voters is 6.4 percentage points higher in a voting district where Hispanic people make up 40 percent of the voting-age population compared to a district where they comprise 10 percent of the voting-age population.

Pew Research surveyed those who did not vote in the 2016 presidential election and learned that the main reasons for not voting were dislike for the candidates and/or the campaign issues, didn't think their vote mattered/disinterested or were too busy or had conflicts with work or school schedules. More information is in the charts below, including trends from prior years.

There are many possible solutions to this problem, mail-in voting options, a national election day, weekend voting, mobile voting stations among them. As always, it is important to reflect on why things are the way they are and who is motivated to change them. Without addressing this, democracy is for the privileged.