2y ago

Pew: Even amid high turnout, less than 40% of Americans voted in all three most recent national elections

www.cnn.com Pew: Even amid high turnout, less than 40% of Americans voted in all three most recent national elections | CNN Politics

Only 37% of eligible American citizens voted in all three of the most recent national general elections, according to a report released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center – even though those elections saw some of the highest turnout in decades. The analysis, which tracked individual Americans’ vot...

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In many states it is near impossible to vote unless you are unemployed or retired due to long lines, terrible hours, and voting locations. It makes me happy to live in a mail-in ballot state where I get my ballot weeks before election day, I have plenty of time to research everyone on the ballot (including judges) and make the best choice available. That's Colorado for you, but we are not alone in that.
- And that's a big reason why Republicans are criticizing mail in ballots. If it became that easy to vote, then many more people would vote and they would have a harder time winning elections.
  So Republicans will still claim mail in ballots are full of fraud despite there being no evidence of any voter fraud on a significant scale. (Definitely nothing that would sway a federal or state level election. Likely not even enough to sway a local election.)
- PA mail-in ballot represent!

If the elections were on a weekend, like Saturday or Sunday then I turn out would be greater. But the puritans evangelists say that Sunday is for their imaginary little man living in the skies 🙄
- Ooo we should make it a national holiday! Have public transportation for everyone to get there and fully support mail in voting across the country.
  
  When would the bus drivers vote, then? Just do away with voting day and have a voting week instead.
  
  I work in a restaurant and don't get any national holidays off and work weekends when do I vote?

Considering the state of the US, it’s really amazing more people don’t vote.
- Isn't the problem that there's only two options? Here in Norway we have 10 different parties that are all quite popular. To me having only two options seems only marginally better than 1.
  
  Yes, but the problem is deeper than that because one party is demonstrably worse than the other. Dems are still too conservative, Republicans are literally tearing the country apart.
  
  Yes. They have FPTP elections everywhere from top to bottom. Even state houses and senates are divided in blue and red because of this, WTF. They could really do with an electoral system update.
  
  Well the problem is we don't have ranked choice voting in most all places. So if you're not voting for red or blue you are kinda wasting your vote.
- That's what happens when you have a presidential election system like the electoral college instead of a popular vote.
  Liberal voter in Arkansas? Your vote doesn't matter. Conservative voter in California? Your vote doesn't matter.
  It's just the sad reality of a winner-take-all system that places more importance on the geographical size of a state rather than individual voters.

Lauren Boebert, the hated representative from Colorado won reelection by just a few hundred votes. This in a state that has mail-in ballots.
A few hundred more people had to vote and we never would have heard from that nutcase again, and yet people couldn't be motivated enough to do it. They wouldn't even have had to drive anywhere to do it. Literally a few seconds of their time and she would have been gone. Nope. People were just too goddamn lazy to do it. And yet those same people would be the first to complain about her winning.
The vast majority of our problems in the US are homegrown and are a result of apathy and laziness. We live in a participatory democracy and that system only works when people actually participate in the process.
- I don't think it had to do with laziness in most cases. It's simply become a "damned if I do, damned if I don't" situation. Voter apathy is huge.

I really don't understand how the extreme emotions involved with politics in our society can result in apparent apathy. Their are conservatives who are willing to kill people over their political differences, but they still don't vote. Progressives get angry about hate-filled legislation and our steady loss of civil rights but won't spend a few hours to vote the people doing it out of office.
Most races are now decided by tiny percentages. Either party has the potential to suddenly take over the government by an overwhelming majority. Convincing less than a tenth of the people who don't vote to show up would do it!
Is saving the country from chaos really not worth a few hours?
- Remember that Republicans have also deliberately done their best to make it much more difficult to vote for a lot of people, as well as opposed any measures which would make it easier to vote.
  Standing in line for 11 hours on a workday without access to water would deter most, and that works as designed.

Which means if everyone who didn't vote instead voted for SpongeBob, he would have handily taken the election
- In other words, third party candidates could win, ending the dictatorship of the winner that's the automatic result in a democracy with only two options (or a stalemate where nothing gets done if two government bodies are controlled by opposing parties.)

Couldn't vote in the last primary because I was registered as an independent. Not making that mistake again

My ballot never came in the midterms...
- You may have to request it each time, and requests may be rejected without notice. So you might have to appeal.
  
  How would I know if it was rejected or if they just never got my request? And how would I know before the election if it was rejected?

Voting is irrelevant now. It can’t stop what’s happening. Not to say you shouldn’t vote, if you’re informed. But the population is not civically educated, by design. And they’re not educating themselves, that’s the role of the government, which is captured. So the solution is… wait. Wait for the fascism, the war, the collapse. Bernie was proof that reform is impossible.
- Hopeless take my dude. I know it feels like we're on a train careening towards a cliff, but don't forget that there are lawyers, judges, and even a small subset of politicians that are still fighting the good fight, and they need to know that we're still behind them.
  They may be in a minority, but I think as more and more people wake up, look around, and get involved politically on the local and state levels, we can still turn this ship around. We have access to more information right at our fingertips than we ever have in the past. It's important for us to strike down fascist and extremist viewpoints, shout them down, and ensure that the younger generations see more level headed approaches.
  
  Never stop fighting.
- Ok doomer.
  
  I wish I weren’t.

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