The most obvious measure of citizen participation in the democratic process is voter turnout -- how many people vote and who they are. The numbers can be measured in various ways: by the percentage of registered voters who actually voted, by the percentage of those citizens old enough to vote who voted or by the percentage of eligible voters who voted. Regardless of which metric of eligibility you use, the United States has one of the lowest voter turnouts of any of the comparator countries, while Australia and Belgium have the highest.
This opens a different question, why don't so many Americans vote? There are countless explanations: absence of trust in government, the degree of partisanship among the population, lack of general interest in politics, institutional barriers to voting, convenience, and a failure of faith in the true effect of voting.
Convenience impacts voter turnout. In the United States, in all but one state, voters must go through a separate registration process before voting, and the vast majority of states do not allow Election Day registration. This two-step process -- register, then vote -- is more complicated than the process in many other countries and discourages some Americans from voting. In Austria, Canada, Germany, France and Belgium, voter lists are generated from larger population databases or by other government agencies, thus simplifying the voting process. For example, Germans who are eighteen or older on voting day automatically receive a notification card before any election in which they are eligible to vote. In Canada, the income tax returns are used for voter registration. In the United Kingdom, every residence receives a notice of those registered within the household, and additional voters can be registered by mail.
By eliminating America's two-step process of first registering and then voting (something that is not a common practice in other countries), voter turnout would increase. The voting process can be further simplified by generating voter lists based on such preexisting government information as driver's licenses, income tax returns, and juror registration information. After all, using government-run population databases to develop voter lists has succeeded in Austria, Germany, France, Belgium, and Canada.
Until America eliminates this two-step process, allowing for Election Day registration would help increase voter turnout. Voter turnout in 2000 was about 15 percent higher in states that had Election Day registration than in those that did not.
There are other measures that can also be taken to increase voter turnout. With "inconvenience" often cited as a reason for not voting, it's time to move to electronic voting and enhanced absentee voting including voting by mail to enhance the convenience factor. Oregon has embraced convenience in two major ways: first, by offering many ways for voters to register, including online, and second, by passing a 1998 ballot initiative requiring that all elections be conducted by mail.
Electronic voting is also likely to increase participation by younger voters. Across most nations, younger citizens are less likely to vote than older voters. With the United States being one of the youngest countries among its competitors, it seems reasonable that electronic voting could have a significant impact on the younger, more tech-savvy American voters. India (not one of the competitor countries) has succeeded in holding national elections using computer technology that was developed, is owned, and is operated by the Indian government. Surely the U.S. government can aspire to do as well.
A key goal in Measure of a Nation is to compare the United States to other wealthy countries, with the idea being to identify which countries are performing the best in each area of interest: health, safety, democracy, education and equality. In each of those areas, the countries that are performing the best are examined to determine which best practices might be applied here in America. Leading countries were labeled Stars and lagging countries were labeled Dogs.
In order to do this analysis, we selected the subset of countries that are both wealthy (nominal GDP per capita over $20,000) and have a population greater than 10 million (upper third of national populations, no city-state countries) as a comparison group. This comparison group consists of 14 countries: Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Portugal, The Netherlands, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
This article is based on excerpts from the recently released book The Measure of a Nation: How to Regain America's Competitive Edge and Boost Our Global Standing:
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http://www.opednews.com/articles/Crashing-at-the-Intersecti-by-Sheila-Parks-120710-968.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/11/1101_041101_election_voting.html
It is disheartening to say the least. We still have an endless war going on, we still have Gitmo, we still have the Patriot Act, we still have heavy security getting heavier.
Now I understand this to a degree, but it seems as if what G.W. Bush said about them hating our way of life being the reason they attacked us, well they won, we have given up much of those freedoms and in the last 10 years our way of life has gotten consistently worse.
So come November I will go cast a vote to keep Romney out of the White House. And if it keeps Obama in , well don't have any hope of seeing real change.
Like some of the countries mentioned in the article, in The Netherlands, we also get a voting card a few weeks before the elections. This is a card that can be used throughtout the city where you live in. So, living in The Hague, I can make use of this voting card at the polling station at the railway station, at the large department store in the center of The Hague or at the old age home that is closest to my house.
But one thing is I think even more important than getting the card, and that is how easy and not-time consuming it is to vote. Whenever I watch images of Americans wanting to vote, I see long lines of people wiating for a polling station. And some have to wait in line for over an hour.
In the Netherlands, we have, relatively speaking, much more polling stations than in the US and although there is a rush-hour at the polling station (just before people are off to work and just after they have returned home), the maximum waiting time is less than 15 minutes.
Now as a former student (and not graduate) in political science and public administration, I deeply value 'democracy' as a concept and my right to vote, but waiting in line for over an hour to vote...I fear that that would discourage me as well.
Quite a big difference :)
You only have to show up on the day and get your name ticked off the list, you are not required to go further and vote. You don't even have to fill out the ballot.
Voting may be compulsory but is in now way "strictly enforced". There is the possibility of fines but often these are not given and are not a prohibitively expensive amount anyway/
But since the polling stations in The Netherlands are open from 7:00 until 21:00 and are also positioned at railway stations and even in shopping malls (or large department stores), it is hardly ever necessary for someone to take an hour off from work.
When the rule of law doesn't apply to the rich and powerful, when our government engages in wars of profit and funnels those profits not to the national coffers, but to the military industrial complex (for which we stand), when we've watched at LEAST one presidential election be stolen, when we have seen that both parties and all candidates are bought and paid for...why the hell should we vote?
This isn't a nation. Read your Hobbes, read your Mill. Nations are predicated on a social contract. Even serfs were supposed to be protected by their lord. Here, in our "enlightened" times, it's every man for himself, and let the Devil take the hindmost! Our social contract has collapsed. We've even taken on the rhetoric of business and the corporate world to talk about our so-called "nation". So let's cut the euphemism and let people work out their cognitive dissonance in their own ways. Since this isn't really a nation, we aren't really citizens. We're capital, to be dispensed with by our masters.
Only citizens can have a civic duty. When this "nation" is interested in having citizens rather than human capital, I'll vote all you want...even if it's inconvenient.
Electronic voting systems will always be vulnerable to technical errors or hackers, problems paper ballots lack in all their simplicity. Furthermore the idea that younger voters can't be bothered unless they can vote online is ridiculous. Stick with the tried and tested methods, elections are too important to be subject to technical experimentation.
A second point is that where elections are proportional, they naturally draw more voters than those which are district-based. I know a lot of people in France who went to considerable trouble to vote in the presidential election - driving up to 200 kilometers, twice, just to vote - but who didn't bother in the parliamentary election because their district was safe for one or the other party, and so they didn't feel their vote would make any difference. This does not prove voter indifference, but voter savvy. In the US it would be interesting to compare voter turnout in "safe" states with that in swing states. Isolating the turnout in swing states would be a better comparison with countries like the Netherlands which have a proportional system.
The US not only has more people who vote than all the "wealthy" nations combined (who allow Democracy), but also the most wealth of all "wealthy" nations combined.
So, since liberals measure happiness with wealth, the US is the most Democratic and Happy nation ever to exist on this planet.