Motivating Voters
by
Jaime O. Perez
Low voter turnout is a well-recognized problem.
In El Paso County, it is estimated that 35 to 45 thousand voters will go to the polls on May 12. Absent a compelling city-wide issue, turnout hovers between 8 and 12 percent of registered voters in off years and between 45 and 55 percent in Presidential election years. But when voting reaches this level, voters tend to restrict their vote for President and Congressional candidates primarily. They tend to treat the remaining candidates uniformly along partisan lines and rarely break partisanship to vote for individual candidates from other parties.
The real problem of voter turnout seems to be motivation; taking the action of going to the polls and voting. The problem is not issue awareness.
Voter Attitudes
A recent poll conducted by a campaign organization to gauge voter attitudes had instructive results: Only 10 percent of voters said they had, “no interest,” in politics. This class of registered voter can be truly categorized as apathetic. 7.5 percent of the County voter roll of 373,000 is inactive. This means the current voter list contains the names of those that have passed or have moved away and only 10 percent of voters recognize their elected representatives.
The above suggests the dead and the brain dead, if you will, together comprise 16 percent of the total number of voters or 65,275. This leaves a total of 307,725 potential or latent voters. Consistent voters have averaged about 50,000 over the last four municipal elections. Subtracting this number from the overall list, leaves a population of 69 percent of all registered voters or 257,725 people.
Abstention
A whopping 77 percent of latent voters say the reason they don’t vote is because they feel their vote would not change anything. 79 percent said they did not trust politicians. 54 percent of those polled feel big money decides who wins elections and almost 70 percent feel big business controls government policies.
75 percent of 16-21 year-olds feel their vote would make absolutely no difference to them.
The Challenge
Voter interest in issues must be transformed into the action of voting say activists. But how does anyone help voters transition from a lack of faith in the electoral system to a faith voting makes a real difference.
Issue Awareness
Yet, revealingly, the poll also showed 83 percent of latent voters care about the war in Iraq, 60 percent care about the environment, 79 percent care about jobs and job advancement and 62 percent cared about immigration issues.
So, Why Don’t They Vote?
What explains only 10 percent of the electorate vote in any given election? There seems to be a cluster of reasons that explains abstention.
- 1. No Choices
Career politicians reinforce the view that they don’t represent their constituency. They think of themselves as trustees and reinforce citizen input is irrelevant to their decision process. They tend to vote for the interests of those that finance their campaigns.
- 2. Manipulation
Media print pseudo polls that purport to show some have ‘already won’ their race even before anyone has arrived at the early voting booth. Foregone conclusions reduce the motivation for latent voters to get to the polling station. Voters with minority views feel they are even worse off because, they reason, what is the point of voting if you will never win?
- 3. Complexity
Multiple candidates and propositions confuse them. Latent voters feel they don’t know enough about the issues to vote on them.
- 4. Work
People hold multiple jobs. If a voter is busy then it adds a disincentive given the previous three reasons.
The Solution
In order to help latent voters become motivated to vote, it is necessary for voter organizations to accomplish three things: Define issues simply and clearly; Identify candidates along issue lines clearly and consistently; and link policy decisions to direct effects on their prosperity.
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This perspective first appeared in Border Observer, Jaime O. Perez, Editor