Those Who Don’t Vote Decide Who Wins
In a private conversation a couple of years ago over coffee at Starbucks I was told by a person with access to voter data bases that in Wisconsin 500,000 people who voted in the 2012 presidential race did not vote in 2016; and 500,000 who voted in 2016 had not voted in 2012. The different result was driven not so much by the same voters going to the polls with a different mindset, but different voters deciding to vote, or not vote. Both political parties clearly understand that turnout, the mix of who votes and who doesn’t vote, determines who wins. There are substantial differences in outlook and strategy, however. Republicans believe the fewer who vote the better. Democrats believe the more who vote the better. Republicans, in states that they control, have passed laws to make voting more complicated and more difficult, shortening times for voting, and increasing the documentation required. Democrats, in states they control, have made voting easier, expanding the ways votes can be cast and increasing the opportunities for early voting. Republicans have not been shy in acknowledging their goal of restricting voting. In a speech in 1980, forty years ago, Paul Weyrich, one of the early leaders of the modern conservative movement, was very clear about not wanting a large turnout in elections. “I don’t want everybody to vote … our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” The President’s reaction last month to Democratic voting proposals was similar. They would produce “levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.” We pay a lot of attention to legislative proposals designed to reduce turnout by making voting more difficult. We pay less attention to campaign strategies designed to reduce turnout by killing the motivation to vote – strategies that can be just as effective in suppressing turnout. Last year the Knight Foundation commissioned a study of the 100 million of voting age in America who are non-voters. Noting that most attention and research is focused on “likely voters”, the Foundation decided to look at non-voters, who they are and why they don’t vote, because “their non-participation is a key feature of our democracy and raises important questions about the basic health of a participatory society.” The report starts with a stark graphic of the results of the 2016 presidential election:
Trump, 27.3 percent;
Clinton, 28.5 percent;
Other, 2.9 percent;
Did not vote, 41.3 percent.
In the most recent national elections, of 32 countries studied, the U.S. was 26th in turnout. There is a lot of background information in the report about who the non-voters are. I was more interested in the why questions. Among the findings were these:
“Moving from trusting the media a lot to trusting it not at all leads to an 8.2 percentage point increase in the likelihood of being a non-voter.”
“Also important is the extent to which people believe the system (voting process) is difficult or easy. Again, this variable has a strong, significant effect on the likelihood that someone is a voter or a non-voter. The more confidence a person has in the system, the less likely he or she is to be a non-voter (a change of 9.7 percentage points).”
“When non-voters who reported a lack of confidence were asked why they feel this way, the top reason given was a perception of elections being rigged or corrupt (27%).”
“Many participants indicated that there was a scarcity of candidates who truly motivated them, leaving them with less-than-ideal alternatives. Non-voters struggling with this choice reported hearing primarily negative information about both options, making ‘none of the above’ a rational choice in their minds.”
Sound familiar? Those are the favorite themes of our President. News is fake. The system is corrupt. Elections are rigged. Opponents hate America. We think he is just engaging his animus and riling up his followers. But he is also undoubtedly following a strategy designed to cause voters to drop out, enhancing his chances of winning. One of the more sobering findings in the Knight study is that emerging voters (age 18-24) who have not been around long enough to be classified as “non-voters” have attitudes more negative toward politics than even non-voters. Compared to non-voters, the young think voting is more difficult, they have less confidence in the election system and process, are less interested in politics and participating, and less likely to follow the news. Forty percent of them get their news from Facebook and Twitter. Fifteen percent think that more people voting is a bad thing. For Democrats who want to increase voter turnout, what can be learned from the Knight Foundation report? One doesn’t have to look much past the answers to the question: Why aren’t you currently registered to vote? Fully half of the non-registered responded: “I’m not interested / Don’t care; My vote doesn’t matter, doesn’t count, or won’t make a difference; The system is corrupt.”
“In focus groups, non-voters spoke frequently about the low real difference they feel elected officials make on their immediate life … ‘They will all tell you what you want to hear, to get them where they want to be … Your life will be the same no matter who the president is.’”
If we want to motivate non-voters to go to the polls, we have to build trust with deeds and not words. We have to show results in things that matter every day for every family: access to health care, economic security, affordable housing, effective education, personal respect and safety. We have to make every community a place where people want to live, work and play. Tasks not done in a day, or a year, or a term. Tasks to work on continuously. Tasks that are never finally done. To paraphrase Jay Leno, “If God wanted us to vote he would have given us something to vote for.”
Douglas Kane is the author of "Our Politics: Reflections on Political Life" published in 2019 by Southern Illinois University Press [subscribe2]