Low Voter Turnout as a Problem

In the past, white men were only allowed to vote. As the years progress towards the 1900s, voting rights got more attention. Women protested their right to vote and were able to eventually win the fight. Today, voting doesn’t seem that important anymore. Citizens are not exercising their right to vote as voter turnouts aren’t very high during elections. It makes people question how democracy can be sustained if people aren’t voting. It also makes them wonder if something needs to be changed in order for voter turnout to increase or should voting be eliminated altogether if it is as useless as it is today. Voter turnout is important in our society and people are taking it as if it didn’t mean anything to them and there are consequences to low voter turnout.

There are some reasons why people aren’t able to vote. Some reasons include work obligations, location of the voter and the polling station, and eligibility to vote. Some people work at night and have obligations to fulfill so there wouldn’t be enough time for them to cast their vote. Location of polling stations can be difficult to access for those voters that are located far away from them. Another reason why people do not vote is the belief that their vote won’t mean anything because they vote in a historically blue or red state where the voters usually lean towards one particular party so the vote wouldn’t mean much if one party continues to get all of the electoral votes.

With low voter turnouts, there will be consequences that come with it. With less people voting, it is difficult to keep a sustainable democracy. In some states, the voting turnout was below 60%, which is barely over half the population eligible to vote. If people voted, there could’ve been a chance where the numbers could potentially swing towards the other candidate which is important for their chances to win. Since some states carry more electoral votes than others, it is critical that those states are represented because those states are essentially deciding who becomes president.

Voting is something citizens should want to be doing. Not every day is an opportunity to go out and express your opinion, so there shouldn’t be reason why you can’t do it once every two or four years depending on the election cycle. It doesn’t take long to cast your vote and there are multiple ways to put in your vote. Voting should remain a political procedure in our country as it allows citizens like us to express our opinion, but changes will have to be made if there isn’t an increase in voter turnouts.

There are two ways that could solve this problem. One way is to require citizens to vote. Every citizen will then be able to express their opinion regardless of whether they like it or not. This will ensure that democracy will be sustained but some citizens may feel that it would take away their rights if we were to establish mandatory voting. Another way is to take away voting and let those who hold a higher ranking make the decision for us. If voter turnout continues to dwindle around where it currently is, our opinion won’t mean anything so those who hold a higher position should be able to make that decision. We won’t have a say on any issues, but it shouldn’t be a problem that those in a higher position will be able to make the decisions for us. The Electoral College would then be able to decide who the better candidate is.

Voting is one of the rights that we have taken for granted. Back then, only white men were allowed to vote and then several years later women earned the right to vote. Eventually, every citizen over 21 was allowed to vote. Now, the importance of voting has dwindled and we are faced with a problem. Voter turnout has decreased as the years pass by for the presidential election and the countries are not being represented as a whole. If only 50% of the state voted, the other 50% is practically unwilling to represent the state. Something needs to be changed in the voting system whether it is encouraging people to vote or forcing them to vote, but voter turnouts cannot continue to decline.

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Lack of citizen knowledge may be another reason why voters aren’t going to the polls. People not knowing much about the government makes it difficult to hold political members accountable for their actions. Public knowledge about politics seems to be low. This problem has continued on despite rising education levels, increased availability of information due to improvements in modern technology, and rising IQ scores. Such widespread and consistent political ignorance and irrationality strengthens the case for limiting and decentralizing the power of government. Widespread ignorance is not new. Political knowledge has been at around a low level for years. But it is astonishing to see that knowledge levels have not increased by much, if at all, despite rising education and the increased availability of information throughout the internet, news, and other modern technologies.

The most obvious way to overcome political ignorance is by increasing knowledge through education. Unfortunately, political knowledge levels haven’t increased much over the last 50 to 60 years, even though education has risen a ton. Rising IQ scores have also failed to increase political knowledge. This suggests that increasing political knowledge through education is a lot harder than it seems.

Perhaps a solution could be a better public-school curriculum that puts more emphasis on civic education. The difficulty is that governments have little motivation to ensure that public schools adopt the curriculum that will increase knowledge on this particular topic. If voters had monitored education policy and rewarded elected officials for using public schools to increase political knowledge, things might have looked different than what it had been. But if voters were to at least have some basic knowledge, there probably wouldn’t have been a political ignorance problem at all.

Some people say that voters don’t need to know much about politics and government because they can rely on information shortcuts to make good decisions. Perhaps the most popular shortcut is retrospective voting which means that voters don’t need to follow the details of policy, but they only need to know whether things are going well or not. If things are going well, voters will revote for the incumbent when the election comes. If things aren’t going well, voters can vote for someone else, and the new elective would come up with better ideas than the previous person in office.

Unfortunately, effective retrospective voting requires more knowledge than we might actually know. To reward or punish incumbents for their actions, it’s important to know what events that were actually caused, and which ones were beyond their control. Studies show that voters routinely reward and punish political leaders for events they have little control over, in particular short-term economic trends. Incumbents can also get rewarded or blamed for the little things that are completely out of their control. Shortcuts are often used for reasons other than getting to the actual truth. Some people may argue that opinion leaders are useful shortcuts. Instead of learning about government policy themselves, voters follow the directions of opinion leaders who share similar values but know more than the voters do. But if we look at the most popular opinion leaders, most of them are not people that are notable for their impressive knowledge of public policy issues. Because there isn’t much motivation to actually seek the truth about political issues, it is often rational for those interested in politics to choose opinion leaders based on how entertaining they are, and whether they make us feel good about the views we already hold. If we choose information shortcuts this way, it becomes likely that they will end up misleading rather than informing.

Political ignorance is not the only factor that should be considered in deciding the size, scope, and centralization of the government. Some large-scale issues, such as global warming and climate change are simply too big of an issue to be effectively addressed by the lower-level governments or private organizations. It is suggesting that the problem of political ignorance should lead us to limit and decentralize government more than we would have otherwise.