I’ve reproduced a graph above which illustrates American voter participation from the founding of the Republic to the present. What are most notable are the sharp decline starting at the beginning of the 20th century and the smaller decline starting about 1960. The factors that produced the decline in voter participation in the early 20th century include civil service reform, extending the franchise to women, demographics, and restrictions placed on voting, particularly on black voters.
Civil service reform led to the political parties having less to offer their supporters. It used to be that when the presidency or governorships changed parties all of the old employees, appointees of the previous administration, were swept out an replaced by appointees of the incoming administration. Eliminating that “spoils system” reduced the influence of the political parties and reduced the stake that people had in voting. So they stopped voting.
We have learned through repeated experiments that extending the pool of eligible voters does not increase participation. Consequently, when the franchise was extended to women it didn’t increase participation. Paradoxically, it might even have decreased participation a bit.
The beginning of the 20th century marked the largest influx of immigrants to the United States in its history with just about 15% of the population being immigrants. As these people became citizens they did not have the same cultural traditions on voting that the previous cohorts of citizens did and, consequently, participation declined.
Finally, in the early part of the 20th century various laws including but not limited to poll taxes worked to suppress the African American vote. Working together all of these factors reduced participation.
What happened in the late 1960s? We extended the franchise to 18 year olds. They became eligible to vote but didn’t vote which meant that participation declined. There are any number of possible explanations for that including cognitive ones and lack of a stake in the outcomes. If we reinstituted the military draft I wouldn’t be surprised if the turnout of 18 year olds increased.
I think that extending the franchise to 16 year old would be extraordinarily imprudent? Why have an age limit at all?
If I were to change voter eligibility I’d eliminate any age limits but limit the franchise to those who paid the majority of their own bills but I’m pretty unreconstructed.
BTW, don’t expect the uptick of 2008 in turnout for presidential elections to persist. I believe that can be explained by people wanting to be part of something historic. That’s already largely been borne out in subsequent elections.
I fail to see a problem. If people don’t think an election matters to them, maybe they are right. It’s just another instance of letting people lead their own lives.
But I do agree with restricting the ballot. I would use the old colonial system of restricting to vote to White men who own property and whose source of income is salaries and wages. I’d also excluse people with graduate degrees or who work for nonprofits or who are retired.
One interesting change in voting was the Australian (secret) ballot. AFAIK it was first introduced to the U.S. in Kentucky in 1888 and spread from there. The benefits of the secret ballot were that it stemmed corruption because voters couldn’t be bribed or intimidated. Intimidation is well attested, but it would tend to decrease voter turnout, while arguably bribery would increase it (except to the extent the potential voter feels the system is rigged).
To my eye, the introduction of the Australian ballot in the late 19th century might be the significant factor, which would suggest some degree of self-interest was important to the high numbers, either in terms of bribes or due to the communal aspects of the public vote.
(This might be an aspect of civil service reform, but a lot of the 19th century stuff about government jobs was superficial.)
The decline also corresponds to urbanization – I wonder if that has anything to do with it.
PD:
I can tell you, based on second hand knowledge, that some forms of bribery persisted into the 20th century. My dad told me that one of his earliest jobs was distributing flasks of whiskey to voters at the polling place. That would have been around 1917-18. Those were the days!
And that’s how we get prohibition . . . Kind of hard to get a grasp of national trends when a lot of the important laws are state/local. From the 1890s onward, states started passing prohibition laws that would eventually lead to the 18th amendment, and one of the complaints was about voting in the saloons. The spread of those laws could be helping reduce turnout, but I think such laws tended to be passed where urban machine politics were not important.
No self-respecting economist will favor voting as long as the opportunity costs are so high and the return so low. Your vote costs you time and money and almost never has any effect. You would be punished as a lawyer or accountant for violation of your fiduciary duty to your client if you wasted so much of his wealth for so little return.
Another problem is that we apparently don’t want to encourage democratic majority rule in everything; the Constitution prohibits majority rule in First and Second Amendment matters, as well it should, and prohibits modifying the Constitution by majority vote.
If society comes to regard voting as essential to maintaining democracy, it can well pay people for voting or punish them for not voting, as many countries do. Until then, count me out.
Up until the 1940’s are here, there were tales of males recieving a half pint while ladies a pouch of Redman, which meant a relaxing afternoon for the men. Now I notice block captains get about 100-150 for GOTV expenses in the metro areas while walking around money for GOTV is common.
As to the future, lets wait and see, 2018, 2020 and 2022 may show sustained increases.
Some countries force bar-closings on election day. Not only should you not bother to vote, you should not bother to stay in the country that day.
Voter participation as a percentage of eligible voters declined from 2008 to 2012 and again from 2012 to 2016.
Maybe people are looking at the choices they have for candidates and just can’t quite convince themselves it is worth the effort.
Steve
Some people are energized by the partisan bickering, but most are turned off, and tune out. Most of what we see as grassroots political rallies are actually organized by the campaigners or their staff. (Or the Russians.)
Voting isn’t a part of daily American life. It’s something people are expected to show up for once every two years, then go home and be silent about until the next. We have made voter participation, which in theory is a populist event, into a top-down system of control in which freedom of choice is an illusion that fools no one but intellectuals.
I do not vote. Why bother? I would rather have Nicki Minaj, Britney Spears, or Kim Kardashian as president, and I would not just replace Trump. I would have replaced Obama and Bush the Younger as well.
Honestly, I am sure that Nicki, Britney, and Kim could invade a country and cause havoc as well as Bush the Younger. I am sure that Nicki, Britney, and Kim could destroy the health insurance system as well as Obama. I am sure that Nicki, Britney, and Kim could build The Wall as tall as Trump.
Do any of you all really want me to vote or get involved in the political process?
Something we’ve talked about before is the decline of civic organizations which not only provided for a sense of community, but also served to train the next generation of leaders. They also motivated to vote on issues these groups cared about.
Today we are a society of atomized individuals – voting makes much less sense.