Voter Turnout

Having the right to vote is one thing, exercising it is another.

- MIT Election Lab.

Voter turnout is a measure of civic participation that many people believe best gauges the health of the electoral process. However, measuring turnout can be more difficult than it first appears, which means that understanding how and why it fluctuates can also be difficult.

Important legislation in the twentieth century, most notably the Voting Rights Act of 1965, has led to a long-term increase in the ability of Americans to participate in elections. The effects of other legislation intended to increase turnout, such as the National Voter Registration Act, have been more limited to specific administrative practices across states.

- Wikipedia: 

In political science, voter turnout is the participation rate (often defined as those who cast a ballot) of a given election. This is typically either the percentage of registered voters, eligible voters, or all voting-age people. According to Stanford University political scientists Adam Bonica and Michael McFaul, there is a consensus among political scientists that "democracies perform better when more people vote."

Institutional factors drive the vast majority of differences in turnout rates. For example, simpler parliamentary democracies where voters get shorter ballots, fewer elections, and a multi-party system that makes accountability easier see much higher turnout than the systems of the United States, Japan, and Switzerland.

United States Elections Project:

- National Turnout Rates Graph.

- Turnout Demographics.

Fairvote: 

- Voter Turnout by State. 

Texas Secretary of State:

- Turnout and Voter Registration Figures (1970-current).

Texas Almanac: 

- Voter Participation in Texas.

From 538: Voter Turnout Fell, Especially In States That Clinton Won

We noticed this in class this week.

- Click here for the article.

Early voting surged. Election Day voting plummeted. The net result: A smaller share of eligible voters cast ballots in 2016 than in either of the previous two presidential elections.

The raw number of votes rose: About 1.4 million more Americans voted in this year’s election than in 2012, a total which itself was down from 2008. But the electorate was growing in the meantime: About 57 percent of eligible voters cast ballots this year, down from 58.6 percent in 2012 and 61.6 percent in 2008, which was the highest mark in 40 years. Turnout still remained well above levels for most presidential election years from 1972 to 2000.

We still don't really know how many people voted though:

These numbers are preliminary estimates subject to change as our decentralized electoral system continues counting votes. There is no official national turnout figure, and the best available estimates — from Michael McDonald, associate professor at the University of Florida, who gathers data at the U.S. Elections Project; and from FiveThirtyEight contributor David Wasserman, who is gathering national vote counts — suggest that more than 4 million votes remain uncounted, more than half of them in California.3Wasserman is collecting presidential votes that have been counted so far; McDonald is using available data to estimate the total number of people who voted. As a result, McDonald’s count is higher. Though a small proportion of the gap between their counts is also due to McDonald counting ballots without a vote for president. McDonald might also be understating the number of California votes still uncounted. He didn’t respond to a request for comment. As a result, figures in this story may not line up with vote-count data published by media organizations. Many news organizations after the election claimed that 46.9 percent of people didn’t vote. But that figure, which may have originated from this tweet, was based on dividing vote totals as of Wednesday morning by all eligible voters.

From the Pew Research Center: Behind Trump’s victory: Divisions by race, gender, education

Expect lot's of analysis in the coming days.

Here's a look at the divides that revealed themselves in Tuesday's election in comparison to previous elections.

- Click here for the article.

And some nice helpful graphs:

Let's compare 2016 with previous elections.

For use in class: David Leip's political atlas.

Neither Trump not Clinton received as many votes as the winner in 2012, 2008 or 2004.

- Click here for voter turnout rates.

Here's an analysis claiming that Clinton lost because Democrats did not show up to vote.

From CityLab: In the U.S., Almost No One Votes in Local Elections - In most major cities, fewer than 15 percent of voters turn out to cast a ballot for mayor.

And - as we know - its worse locally.

But is this deliberate?

And note that old folks do vote - and that matters.

- Click here for the article.

Fewer than one in five eligible residents in Los Angeles vote in mayoral elections. In New York City, that figure falls to less than 14 percent. In fact, in 15 of the 30 most populous cities in the U.S., voter turnout in mayoral elections is less than 20 percent.

As if incredibly low voter turnout weren’t dispiriting enough, mayoral elections in the U.S. are also barely representative of the population. In the most recent mayoral elections across 50 U.S. cities, the median voter age was 57—evidence of an enormous gap in civic participation between retiring Baby Boomers and rising Millennials. Worse still, perhaps, voters are overrepresented in some neighborhoods and dramatically underrepresented in others.

A new report from Portland State University finds that almost nobody bothers to vote in mayoral U.S. elections. Those who do tend to be much older than the median resident and hail from more affluent neighborhoods to boot. That’s not necessarily a surprise, although the degree of disparity in local voting patterns is alarming.

In Dallas, for example, the median age of voters in mayoral elections is 62, even though the median age of the adult population is 41—a difference of an entire generation. Only 6.1 percent of eligible voters across the city participated in the last mayoral election (May 2015), with most of them clustered in voting “oases” in relatively affluent Dallas neighborhoods to the north and northeast.

From the NYT: For Every 10 U.S. Adults, Six Vote and Four Don’t. What Separates Them?

For both 2305 and 2306: Perhaps the biggest problem with low voter turnout is that it is not uniform. Some groups vote at higher rates than others, and have more electoral muscle as a result. This is especially true for groups that habitually vote in all elections, even primary, special, and municipal elections where one vote can in fact matter.

- Click here for the article.

While young people, poor people and Hispanics are often singled out for low voting rates, there are millions of nonvoters in every demographic group. In fact, the majority of people who didn’t vote in the 2012 presidential election were white, middle-income and middle-aged.

But what distinguishes voters from nonvoters can be only partly explained by demographics. Experts say individuals tend to be motivated by a combination of their priorities, their group culture, how competitive their state is, and how easy or hard it is to vote.

The richer, older and more educated you are, the more likely you are to vote.

At the individual level, education and income are still two of the strongest predictors of whether someone will turn out at the polls.

“Most of the differences between people who vote and those who don’t vote can be accounted for by motivational reasons — levels of political interest and engagement,” said Benjamin Highton, a professor of political science at the University of California, Davis. “And levels of political interest and engagement are strongly correlated with education and income.”

From the New York Times: Critics See Efforts by Counties and Towns to Purge Minority Voters From Rolls

Perhaps this addresses the question posed in the previous post.

- Click here for the article.

. . . the purge of Sparta voters is precisely the sort of electoral maneuver that once would have needed Justice Department approval before it could be put in effect. In Georgia and all or part of 14 other states, the 1965 Voting Rights Act required jurisdictions with histories of voter discrimination to receive so-called preclearance before changing the way voter registration and elections were conducted.

Three years ago, the Supreme Court declared the preclearance mandate unconstitutional, saying the blatant discrimination it was meant to prevent was largely a thing of the past.
But since the Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 ruling in the voting-rights case,Shelby County v. Holder, critics argue, the blatant efforts to keep minorities from voting have been supplanted by a blizzard of more subtle changes. Most conspicuous have been state efforts like voter ID laws or cutbacks in early voting periods, which critics say disproportionately affect minorities and the poor. Less apparent, but often just as contentious, have been numerous voting changes enacted in counties and towns across the South and elsewhere around the country.

They appear as Republican legislatures and election officials in the South and elsewhere have imposed statewide restrictions on voting that could depress turnout by minorities and other Democrat-leaning groups in a crucial presidential election year. Georgia and North Carolina, two states whose campaigns against so-called voter fraud have been cast by critics as aimed at black voters, could both be contested states in autumn’s presidential election.

Kristen Clarke, the president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a leading voting-rights advocacy group, said that before the Supreme Court’s Shelby County ruling, discriminatory laws and procedures had been blocked by the preclearance provisions.

Now, she said, “We’re seeing widespread proliferation of these laws. And we are left only with the ability to mount slow, costly case-by-case challenges” to their legality.

From CNN: Latino vote: Will the sleeping giant finally choose the next president?

This has been predicted - incorrectly - for several elections. Will it be true this year?


- Click here for the article.

Will Latinos -- now the nation's largest minority -- choose the next president and make history, too?

The answer may boil down to Nevada and eight other states, all places where Latinos could determine who becomes the next president -- if they vote in sufficient numbers, according to a new study by City University of New York in partnership with CNN en Español. 

The signs are optimistic.

Latinos are already voting in higher numbers: In 1992, they cast only 3.9% of all votes at the national level, but their share is projected to approach 10% in November, the study said.

The study identifies nine small and big states where Latinos could flex their growing muscle and actually swing the vote for the White House: Nevada, North Carolina, Virginia, Colorado, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as well as the delegate-rich states of Florida and Ohio.

"States with relatively small percentages of the total national Latino electorate will probably determine who will be the next president of the United States," the study said.

Barack Obama praises Australia's mandatory voting rules

We will discuss voting turnout in some sections soon enough - and look at the low levels of turnout in the US as compared to other nations. The high turnout in some nations is due to the fact that voting is mandatory. Australia is an example...


- Click here for the article.

President Barack Obama says if the US followed Australia and introduced mandatory voting at elections it would have a transformative impact on America.

The president, speaking to students at the University of Chicago Law School, said the US has some of the lowest voting rates of any advanced democracy in the world.

“Australia has got mandatory voting,” Mr Obama said on Friday.

“You start getting 70-80 per cent voting rates, that’s transformative.”

In the 2013 federal election in Australia voter turnout for the lower house of parliament was 93.34% and 94% in the Senate, according to the Australian Electoral Commission. In the 2010 election the figures were 93.22% and 93.83% respectively.

This compares with just 36% of America’s voting-eligible population casting ballots at the crucial mid-term elections in 2014 –the lowest turnout in more than 70 years, despite control of Congress being up for grabs and state governor races contested.

Just 53.6% of voting-age Americans voted at the 2012 presidential election.

“We really are the only advanced democracy on earth that systematically and purposely makes it really hard for people to vote,” Mr Obama said

Millennials and the 2016 election

For classroom discussion - and a written assignment for a small handful of students:

In 2305's section on public opinion we will looks at the concept of a political generation. Most students are members of the millennial generation - though another generation is creeping up behind them. I've heard them referred to as the Homeland Generation, and as Generationi (get it?).

I want you to consider what unique impact each generation is likely to have on the outcome of the 2016 election - but focus especially ion the millennial generation

For info:

- The Whys and Hows of Generations Research.
- How Millennials Will Impact the 2016 Election Without Voting.
- Clinton Maintains Big National Lead, Millennials Optimistic on Sanders.
- Do College Students’ Votes Really Matter in an Election?
- Will Millennials Determine The 2016 Presidential Election? New Poll Looks At Their Voting Plans.

No surprise here. From the Texas Tribune: Texas Near Bottom Among States in Primary Turnout This Year

It's standard fare. We beat Louisiana!

- Click here for the article.

Texas saw record turnout numbersin last week’s presidential primaries, but it still had one of the lowest voting-age participation rates of the states that have held primaries so far.

More than 4.2 million Texans voted in the presidential primary race, the most in state history, according to the Secretary of State. However, among the 12 states that already have held primaries, Texas ranked second to last in voter turnout of residents 18 and older, at 21.5 percent.

The Lone Star State came ahead of only Louisiana, where 17.3 percent of residents of voting age participated in elections there Saturday. Louisiana, unlike Texas, uses a closed system for presidential primaries, meaning a person must be registered as a Democrat or Republican before the election to be able to vote in one of the party's primaries.

Rice University political science professor Mark Jones said low Democratic turnout and Texas’ diverse population accounts for the state's low percentage.

From the Texas Tribune: Republican Presidential Race Fueled Record Primary Turnout

26.1% turnout in Harris County
27.8% turnout in Brazoria County.

- Click here for the article.

Voting turnout in Texas surged on Tuesday with a record high number of Republican voters making it to the polls for the party's primary, thanks to a volatile presidential party contest and the state's earlier position in the nation's primaries.

"It's unprecedented," said Tom Mechler, Texas GOP chairman. "It's definitely historical."

Melcher attributed the record-breaking turnout to Texas' place on the primary schedule plus the fact that this was only the second time in Texas history that there was a GOP primary in all 254 counties.

"The reason that this has happened is that Texans believe they are going to have a say," he said.

More than 2.8 million Republican ballots were cast in Texas, approximately double the 2012 Republican primary total of 1.4 million. In the Democratic primary, more than 1.4 million were cast, besting the 2012 totals but falling far short of the nearly 2.9 million Democratic ballots cast in the 2008 primary, when the contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton drew strong interest.

The combined turnout for both primaries this year is comparable to the 4.2 million primary ballots cast in 2008, according to unofficial totals.

From Vox: Primary voters don't really look like America

A point we've been making repeatedly in class.

- Click here for the article - and video!

We live in a country with a two-party system. We only get two real choices (usually) when it's time to pick a president. This means the people who decide each party's nominee play a hugely important role.

So who are these people?

For starters, it's a small group. Just 20 percent of American adults vote in presidential primaries. They tend to be older, whiter, and better-educated than your average general election voter.

Primary voters also tend to be highly partisan, which helps explain why ideas at the fringes of each party (free college for all, a giant wall along the Mexican-US border) gain traction during the primaries.

Why vote? Maybe there's no need.

Some Texas Races Decided Before Voters Hit Polls.

We are just one week away from Super Tuesday but before a single ballot is counted in the March 1st Primary, we already know who some of the winners will be in November.

There are 16 seats up for grabs in the State Senate in the 2016 election. If you look at the list of Republican and Democratic candidates, 12 of these elections are one party races—meaning there are only Republicans or Democrats in the running.

Nine of the State Senate elections are one-person races—meaning there is only one candidate in the running.
According to their party’s websites, the Libertarian and Green Parties will challenge six of those seats in the general election but that still leaves three State Senators who are set to win the election by default.

It is still possible for other third party independent candidates to join the statewide races before the November election, but it’s difficult to win as an independent, especially when a candidate joins this late in the game.

The primaries narrow the list of candidates to determine who the Republican and Democratic nominees will be, but in many races, primary voters will only have one option within their party.

Between the State House and Senate Races, 47 percent of the Republican candidates will run unopposed in the primary election. The same goes for 45 percent of the Democratic candidates— they face no inner-party competition.

Some candidates will go completely unchallenged, with no bipartisan competition in the general election.

Of the 150 seats in the Texas House of Representatives, 48 candidates are set to run unopposed in both the primaries and that general election—that’s including competition from the Libertarian and Green parties.

In total, with the 48 seats in the State House and three senate seats, that’s more than 30 percent of state legislature who are set to get elected not by voters, but by default.

Political consultant David Butts said some argue this is not what a democracy should look like. “It’s more a ‘dollar-ocracy.’ It’s money basically controlling that system,” Butts said.

65 percent of all the elections in the state senate and house are one-party races and with only Republicans or only Democrats in the running, that means the winners will likely be determined in the primaries.

“Why spend money in a race when there is no chance of you winning?” Butts said, “Even if you spent $1 million in some of these seats, you couldn’t win.”

He said gerrymandering has become a “very refined art,” not just in Texas, but all across the U.S. “There is just no reason for running in them, they are either so Democratic or so Republican that no one can challenge them,” said Butts.

A political consultant with more than 30 years of experience in Texas politics, Butts said It’s not worth the opposing party’s time or money to enter a candidate in a race—especially when the dominate party has an incumbent in the running.

“You’re more likely to get struck my lightening then get one of those seats,” Butts said. “This is a numbers game, it’s math—you realize that the odds of you winning are very, very remote.”

The state’s voting districts were last drawn in 2011 by the Republican controlled legislature.

“Democrats do it, Republicans to do it and that leads to sort of a one party system that develops out of that,” Butts said, “The problem is that you have very few districts where you have a real contest.”

If election season is the time for voters to make their voices heard, Butts said a lack of competition gives them little say.

From 538: Ted Cruz’s General Election Strategy Is Wishful Thinking

There are multiple reasons I like this story. The graph below breaking voter turnout into ideological categories might be the best.

- Click here for the article.

From the Texas Tribune: Turnout for Texas Primaries Expected to Be Highest Since 2008

It'll still be very low compared to the general election though. This despite the fact that the primary election in Texas is the only one that really matters in the state due to gerrymandering and other factors.

- Click here for the article.

With the race for the Republican presidential nomination too close to call and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont still waging an energetic campaign against Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, election officials are bracing for exceptionally high turnout in this year's Texas primaries, where early voting begins today.

“I think Republican turnout is going to blow the doors off,” said Harris County Clerk Stan Stanart. “We’re planning on 100,000 more than we’ve ever done before.”

Both major parties are holding their primaries on March 1, and this year the Texas contests come unusually early in the presidential nomination process. Usually, far more states have primaries and caucuses scheduled before the Lone Star State, meaning that a prospective nominee is typically on the way toward wrapping things up by the time Texans weigh in, depressing turnout.

Presidential election years draw the most voters. Despite important federal, state and local races on the ballot during midterm elections, turnout typically suffers without a high-profile race for the White House at the top of the ballot. In elections of any kind, turnout tends to increase with the stakes: if candidates appear locked in a fierce battle, more people show up at the polls.

Be sure to check the bar graphs in the article for recent turnout numbers.

From The Hill: Why Americans feel politically powerless

An early theme in class is the requirement that citizens in a republic be actively involved in its maintenance. I threw this quote at you for good measure:

The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.

It was from Charles de Montesquieu - one of the better regarded commentators around the time of the constitutional convention. The great danger to public welfare is if people just check out, this is something that can very easily happen if they feel unable to impact events. Here's an update on the notion.


- Click here for the article.

The author takes the general population to task for failing to live up to its responsibilities - and perhaps having an unreal expectation of what immediate impact they can have on the political system. His key point seems to be that government classes seem to paint an unrealistic picture of the relationship between the governed and the government. People in power will follow the will of the people because we think they are supposed, despite evidence that they tend to follow the money - or at least the engaged. The lesson seems to be "citizenship ain't easy." Not a bad one.

American citizens themselves are a part of the problem and largely responsible for their marginalized status in the world’s most celebrated self-rule democracy. Why have the American people, the popular sovereign of our democracy, not challenged this political take over by the fat cats?

In high school government and civics high school classrooms across America young citizens-to-be are indoctrinated with a version of democracy based more on historic and political myths than political reality.

Magruder's American Government, a widely used textbook revised and published annually since 1917, is a typical example of schoolbook democracy. Here students learn the U.S. Constitution is built on a few basic principles, including popular sovereignty: "In the United States, all political power belongs to the people. The people are sovereign. Popular sovereignty means that people are the only source of governmental power. Government can govern only with the consent of the governed.”

As school kids mature into young adults and gain their own first-hand experience of the political world around them, they soon realize how ill-prepared they—the sovereign people—are to compete with wealthy election campaign donors and professional corporate lobbyists who dominate, between elections, the behind the scenes deal making that determines who gets what.

In addition, studies show that once in office lawmakers give top priority to the care and feeding of their election campaign backers and corporate lobbyists, not the citizens who actually voted them into office.

No wonder citizens feel angry and politically powerless. But why don’t citizens unite and push back?

The late Yale professor Edmund Morgan, author of, Inventing the People: the Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America, provides a more complete explanation for the failure of American citizens to react more strongly against the outsourcing of their democracy.

Clinging to their classroom version of democracy in which they are the ultimate and legitimate political power in America, citizens, according to Morgan, willingly suspend their disbelief in schoolbook myths and pretend they are true——even with abundant real-life evidence that they are not.

“The success of government,” says Morgan, “requires the acceptance of fictions, requires the willing suspension of disbelief, requires us to believe that the emperor is clothed even though we can see that he is not…Government requires make-believe…Make believe that the people have a voice or make believe that the representatives of the people are the people.”

This tug-of-war between political myths and political reality has driven citizens out of the political arena and, in effect, outsourced the American democracy to wealthy campaign financiers and powerful corporations.

About MUD's and low voter turnout.

Just to add fuel to the fire regarding the consequences of low voter turnout: Here's a good look at how the political process - on the local level - really operates. 2306 students might want to think about this in order to catch up on the consequences of low voter turnout, in addition to single purpose governments.

- In area MUD elections, handful of voters decide $1 billion in bonds" 'Rent-a-voter' districts chided while supporters point to progress.

A few months ago, a cabinet maker and his wife were recruited to move into a manufactured home parked on a dirt road that was plowed into the woods on the west side of Conroe in Montgomery County.

Daniel and Deborah Spiecher are now the only residents of a newly created municipal utility district, or MUD, carved from 82 acres of land there. They are also the only ones eligible to vote Tuesday on $500 million in proposed bonds to develop that tract.

In fact, they are among just seven voters who will decide the fate this week of $1.07 billion in bonds for roads, water, sewer and recreational facilities in three such districts that were recently formed in this fast-growing county north of Houston. The debt will be repaid with taxes imposed on future residents and businesses. While some believe the MUDs provide a means to bring about high-end development in an orderly way, critics say they are out of control, with developers manipulating the democratic process to essentially take on the roles of cities and borrow hundreds of millions of dollars to make public improvements.

Montgomery County resident Adrian Heath decries the lack of transparency and citizen input into what critics call "rent-a-voter" MUD elections. Heath notes that the billion-dollar MUD proposals make the contentious, countywide election over a $280 million road bond package look like "kid stuff."

Yet an attorney representing one of the developers for the three MUDs refers to these initial seven voters as "urban pioneers."

"They move onto the land and help establish new communities, paving the way for the future homeowners," said Angela Lutz, the attorney for Stoecker Corp., which plans to develop land covered by a separate MUD on Conroe's west side and also north of The Woodlands. She stressed these elections are completely legal, as well as being "typical and ordinary" and the way MUDs have operated for decades.

From the Pearland Journal: Brazoria County voter turnout historically low

But we knew this already.

- Click here for the article.

Brazoria County has historically had poor voter turnout at the polls, typically between five and seven percent. That means that approximately 10,000 out of almost 180,000 people determine county leadership. Pearland City Councilmember Keith Ordeneaux recently brought this issue up on social media: “During my time on council many of my views have been strengthened and confirmed. One of the most important of these is the lack of informed input from the public to their elected officials. I hear many people saying that government is out of control. I cannot totally disagree with these statements. So why do we feel that government is out of control? Why has this happened? What should be done to correct the problem? Where should we start to fix the problem?”

This story was published in 2014, but the figures for the election this past November are little better.

For the most recent turnout figures, click here.

From the Houston Chronicle: Texas counties turn to voting centers to boost turnout

County officials are using apps to help voters find places to vote. This is from September, so there's no feedback yet on whether these actually worked.

- Click here for the story.

Just in time for the November election, Galveston County has launched the first mobile app of its kind in the state, called "Galveston Votes." It uses GPS to direct people with lightning speed to the closest voting center.

Fort Bend County in November will make its first foray into using "voting centers" that are open to all voters countywide, rather than restricting them to their neighborhood precinct.

Montgomery and Harris counties are studying whether to do the same thing.

These efforts are part of a growing trend to counter Texas' low voter turnout - ranked nationally in 2014 third from the bottom. More and more counties across the state are moving toward using these voting centers. They are looking for any way they can to make voting more accessible and entice voters to the polls.

The centers, which can be located anywhere from grocery stores to shopping malls, may be used by any eligible voter within a county. Voters will no longer be restricted to one precinct site.

The National Conference of State Legislatures says the possible advantages include convenience, financial savings and increase in turnout. Possible drawbacks include a loss of the tradition of neighborhood voting, confusion if the scheme isn't properly explained to voters and the cost of new equipment and technology.

Harris County will give these a trial run in March.

Harris County, like Montgomery, is studying the issue. Harris County Clerk Stan Stanart plans to test new infrastructure at a few polling locations during the primary next March that could be used for future voting centers.

But Stanart warns that converting a county as large as Harris, with its 4.3 million people and 769 polling stations, would be logistically challenging and costly. Each polling station has to be electronically linked to update in "real time" the names of those who are voting at various stations.

"We do that now in early voting with 41 stations, but don't have the ability to do 769 yet," he said.

About 13 percent of all Texas counties are now using countywide voting centers and the number keeps rising, said Alicia Pierce, spokeswoman for the Texas Secretary of State, who said many voters enjoy the convenience it affords.