America's Voting Record Not Anything To Crow About: Mayor

Written by Mayor Mary Marvin:

BRONXVILLE, NY — As you read this, the 2018 election cycle is winding down.

The last-minute saturation of the airwaves got me to thinking about all the aspects that prompt us to vote or not vote as Americans.

As a nation, we have a dreadful voting record as judged by the eligible voters who actually cast a ballot. We rank 31st of 34 nations when compared with developed countries.

Recent national elections in Belgium, Turkey and Sweden brought out above 80 percent of the voting public. To be fair, Belgium and Turkey are two of the 28 nations where voting is compulsory. Though not at all strictly enforced, with many excuses accepted, the law does have a dramatic effect on participation. As example, Chile switched to voluntary voting and the percentage of voters plummeted in one year from 87 percent participation to 42 percent. Twenty nations currently have compulsory voting.

High voter turnout in Germany and Sweden is credited to automatic registration by the government when one reaches voting age. Registration, a personal responsibility in the U.S., only results in 65 percent of those eligible doing the paperwork required.

The date of voting seems to have a great correlation with participation. In Australia, Brazil and Belgium, where voting is always on a weekend or national holiday, participation is above 80 percent.

Our Tuesday voting is anachronistic, dating to a Congressional decision from 1845. As a predominantly agrarian society at the time, with travel by horse and buggy, voters needed a day to reach the county seat, a day to make their voting selections and then a day to travel back home, all without interfering with the three days of the week dedicated to religious worship. That left only Tuesday and Wednesday and Wednesday was the tradition Market Day, so Tuesday was chosen.

The month of November was chosen because spring and early summer voting would interfere with the planting season and late summer and even early fall overlapped with the harvest. The only window open was early November before the arrival of potentially harsh winters.

Since every survey points to inconvenience as the No. 1 reason Americans do not vote and Congress has managed to move Columbus Day, Martin Luther King Day and carve out a Presidents’ Day, the precedent is there, if not the inclination, to move from Tuesday voting.

According to the Census Bureau, 245.5 million Americans age 18 and older are eligible to vote, yet only 157.6 million are currently registered. Conversely, 91 percent of Brits and Canadians and 96 percent of our Swedish counterparts who are eligible to vote are registered.

According to national surveys, Americans don’t vote for the No. 1 reason of inconvenience. Following closely behind are reasons ranging from lack of interest, too busy, can’t miss work, think their vote has no impact, illness, dislike of the candidates, out of town or simply forgot.

The data reveals that if you are young, a minority, less affluent and less educated, you vote in record low numbers.

Financial security in particular is strongly correlated with nearly every measure of political engagement. Citizens earning over $100,000 vote in double the numbers of those with incomes below.

As to the correlation with education, 44 percent of eligible voters without a high school diploma voted in the 2012 Presidential Election vs a 77 percent turnout rate by those with a college degree.

The surveys also uniformly confirm that our young people do care about politics, but a majority of them just dislike it! Less than a third of eligible voters ages 18 to 30, think running for office is an “honorable thing to do”, and 75 percent of them didn’t even vote in the most recent Presidential election.

In what was a major surprise to me, we, as New Yorkers, have dreadful participation numbers. For the 2014 election, we ranked 48th out of 50 states in voter turnout despite having the fourth most registered voters in the nation. Even during the 2016 presidential election year, which always garners the highest turnout, only 57.2 percent of those eligible voted, ranking us eighth worst in the country.

Maine leads in voter participation with 72 percent while Hawaii is last with just 47 percent. Daniel Webster’s words from two centuries ago perhaps resonate now more than ever. “Impress upon children the truth that the elective franchise is a social duty of as solemn a nature as man can be called to perform; that a man may not innocently trifle with his vote; that every free elector is a trustee as well for others as himself; and that every measure one supports has an important bearing on the interests of others, as well as his own.”

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