Voting Records

Thirty-eight Iraqis lost their lives yesterday.

They weren’t shot while attacking US troops, or engaged in any kind of terrorist activities.

The were killed while trying to vote. Individuals opposed to the idea of a democratic election chose to engage in violent activities that caused their death.

Think about that for a minute.

Here in the US, voting is about as easy as it could possibly be. You can register whenever you renew your driver’s license, by going to the courthouse, or by responding to one of the gazillions of voter registration people that will accost everyone who appears to be over 18 at any shopping center during the right season.

You don’t have to declare your ideology or do a whole lot other than give your name and address. Registration lasts for the rest of your life, assuming you vote in at least some of the elections and don’t move your residence.

The actual voting is pretty easy, too. Early voting is open from early morning through the evening, usually at least 6 days a week, and is usually in relatively convenient locations – recreation centers, libraries, courthouses.

Voting on the election day is even easier. In one of the few throwbacks to an earlier time, voter locations are designed to be accessible by foot from the residents they serve, acknowledging a time when that was the primary form of locomotion. They are therefore seldom more than a few blocks away from anyone.

When you get there, any time between 6:30 in the morning to about 7:30 in the evening (this varies by state), you go to the people working the counter, tell them your name and get your ballot. If you’ve thought ahead, you can even download the ballot from the internet a day or two beforehand and go in with notes that will have you out in just a few minutes.

Nobody is shooting at Americans trying to vote. There haven’t been significant incidents of mass violence at US polling places in about four decades, although, of course, there are always isolated incidents otherwise. Even that is a rarity, though.

Most of us can be in and out in less time than it takes to get a cup of coffee. Depending on where you’re at, you may even be offered a cup of coffee. The people who run the polling places tend to be pretty friendly, despite any differences they may have politically.

In fact, the most annoying thing about going to vote in the US is usually the poll workers for the individual candidates, each with their toes carefully on the line of demarcation indicating the legal limit of how close they can get to the polls.

So why is voter turnout so abysmally low in the United States? Without a doubt, those running the government have a significant impact on most of our lives. Not only do they determine the taxes we’ll pay, but also things as remote as whom we’re allowed to marry, whether we can adopt children, what types of occupations we can enter and how wide the door to the bathroom is. They’re having impacts in a lot of areas that we might not even think about, and yet a huge percentage of US citizens eligible to vote don’t bother to do so.

I won’t put all the statistics here, because they put even me to sleep. It’s enough to recognize that voter turnout peaked in the early 1960’s, fell terribly until it hit an all time low in 1988 and have now climbed back up to about 1960 levels.

It’s still much lower than in most industrialized nations.

Check out http://www.fairvote.org/voter-turnout if you’re interested in specifics. It’s got a pretty good narrative about the different things that impact turnout and links to other statistics.

Here’s the underlying question – if Americans don’t appreciate democracy enough to turn up one day every couple of years (don’t forget the off-year elections, when turnout is traditionally even smaller) do we deserve to keep it?

If not used and protected, eventually our rights to determine the representatives to our government will be lost. Is this a fitting consequence for the apathy of the American people? While we may not lose the government entirely, it certainly seems likely that more radical fringe groups that are able to mobilize their constituency are having a greater and greater impact on the outcomes of elections.

Look at the ultra right-wing evangelical Christians, who were largely a non-entity until the 1980 election when Ronald Reagan first frothed them into motion. Today they exert a significantly disproportionate amount of influence on elections and the resulting government compared to their percentage of the population or those people who share their beliefs.

The sad reality is, with large numbers of our population choosing not to vote, a minority ends up taking over the government, especially when things are balanced as closely to 50/50 as they are in the United States today.

The winners in many elections are largely a function of the weather on election day and the ability of groups with special interests to get those with similar beliefs out to the polls. It doesn’t necessarily show what the majority of the people in the country want.

You have to wonder what turnout would be like if there were death threats and the possibility of being shot while exercising your right to vote. Yet the people in Iraq braved those conditions in hopes of forging a democracy are every bit as brave as the early US residents who stood up to the British King to create their new country.

Maybe we have something to learn from them.