Likelihood doesn’t seem to equate to actual turnouts though. I am not going to research google to back this up but just looking at the actual voter turnouts it would be pretty hard to say that voter apathy isn’t everywhere.
Nothing? I have heard that voting is something that is easy to do if you have a job that has some flexibility, and the ability to travel. For those that are less affluent, I would think taking time off, getting help registering or just being able to get to the polling place is somewhat of a task, or might be impossible. Many have wondered what moving Veterans Day, so more might have an opportunity.
Still, not doing research to back up a claim is why Republican candidates usually get higher Pinocchio ratings on everything. I am not going to google it, because it’s obviously true.
Sure Timex, the 12th, 6th and 7th aren’t gerrymandered at all.
It never ceases to amaze me how the US right are willing to lie with a straight face about easily checkable facts. Timex obviously thinks we are stupid.
I’m not a fan of anyone defending Republican tactics regarding all the obvious voters suppression tactics on their part, but Timex doesn’t deserve the tone of this post. At least I don’t think he does. We all have our biases that influence our thoughts and opinions, and those obviously influence Timex’s posts, but I don’t think his posting history suggests a habit of being disingenuous with factual info.
Um, yes it does. Or at least that’s how I meant it in that sentence. Apologies if I was unclear. Let me try again.
From everything I’ve read, historically income correlates strongly with voter turnout. Higher income bracket folks turn up to vote at a much higher percentage than low income bracket folks.
I would need to see evidence before I found believable your assertion that it was simple apathy. It sounds too much like the classic American scorn for the underprivileged that rationalizes away socioeconomic injustice by asserting that the under privileged are just lazy or apathetic or have some sort of moral failing that prevents their prosperity.
Agree. He may be seriously downplaying the severity of what Pennsylvania did with their congressional districts, but he has always been a reasonable person to discuss with.
That said, yeah, Pennsylvania has some seriously sleazy districting going on, and pretending otherwise is a poor choice.
I may be wrong. I am just not in a position to waste time googling something right now. If I am wrong then so be it.
Let me just drop this…
They estimate that as a percent of eligible voters, turn out was: 2000, 54.2%; in 2004 60.4%; 2008 62.3%; and 2012 57.5%. These were the same figures as given by the Center for the Study of the American Electorate.
Now presidential election years tend to bring out the most voters. So of those who were actually registered at best 6 in 10 actually turn out in presidential election years. I would say that is pretty apathetic. I will grant that those figures probably vary from city to city and that perhaps to a degree economic status increases the likelihood you vote. But I am not arguing that, I am merely arguing that the biggest problem is apathy. Even 40% of those who register don’t bother voting.
Gerrymandering impact on US politics:
http://election.princeton.edu/2015/12/08/the-net-effect-of-gerrymandering-in-nine-states-exceeds-that-of-population-clustering-in-all-50-states/#more-13110
http://election.princeton.edu/2015/12/05/can-math-save-democracy/
http://www.fairvote.org/what_affects_voter_turnout_rates
For what it is worth…
Turnout varies greatly by state. In the 2012 Presidential Election, 76% of eligible Minnesotans cast ballots, whereas only 45% of eligible Hawaiians did. Many different factors influence voter turnout levels.
Electoral Competitiveness: One of the most important factors is the competitiveness of the presidential election in each state. Overall, 66% of eligible voters turned out to the polls in the nation’s 12 most competitive states in 2012, but only 57% did in the nation’s 39 other states (including the District of Columbia).
Election Type: Low turnout is most pronounced in primary elections, off-year elections for state legislators, and local elections. For example, a 2013 study of 340 mayoral elections in 144 U.S. cities from 1996-2012 found that voter turnout in those cities averaged at 25.8%. In many cities, mayors have been elected with single-digit turnout. For example, turnout in Dallas’ 1999 mayoral election was a mere 5%.
Run-off elections for all offices also tend to have lower turnout that first round elections, especially if the first round election takes place on the same day as several other elections. For example, of 171 regularly scheduled primary runoffs for U.S House and U.S. Senate from 1994 to 2012, all but six of them resulted in a turnout decrease between the initial primary and the runoff, meaning that 96.5% of federal runoff elections had fewer people voting in the second round than in the first. The average reduction in turnout was 35.3%. Additionally, the longer the wait between the initial primary and the runoff, the higher the decrease in voter turnout between elections. Primary elections with a gap of more than thirty days had a median decline in voter participation of 48.1%, while those with a gap of twenty days or less had a median decline of 15.4%.
Voting Laws: Voter registration laws, voter identification laws, early voting, and polling place accessibility can also affect voter turnout, though not always in the ways that we might expect. For example, the introduction of early voting, which was intended to make voting easier and increase turnout, appears to have actually decreased turnout.
Demographics: In the aggregate, voters tend to be older, wealthier, more educated and whiter than non-voters.
Age: Young people are much less likely to vote than older ones. From 1972 to 2012, citizens 18-29 years old turned out at a rate 15 to 20 points lower than citizens 30 year and older.
Race/ethnicity: Voter turnout also varies by race and ethnicity. In 2012, turnout rates among eligible white and black voters was 64.1% and 66.2%, respectively, while it was only 48.0% and 47.3% among Latino and Asian American voters respectively. The 2012 election was the first presidential election since Reconstruction ended in which black turnout exceeded white turnout.
Gender: Women’s voter turnout has surpassed men’s in every presidential election since 1980. In the 2012 election, 7.8 more women than men voted. Interestingly though, older women are actually less like to vote than older men. In 2008, 72.2% of men 75 years and older voted, compared to only 64.9% of women that age.
Socio-economic status: Wealthy Americans vote at much higher rates than those of lower socio-economic status. During the 2008 presidential election, only 41% of eligible voters making less than $15,000 a year voted, compared to 78% of those making $150,000 a year or more. Studies have shown that this difference in turnout affects public policy: politicians are more likely to respond to the desires of their wealthy constituents than of their poorer constituents, in part because more of their wealthy constituents vote.
No. I don’t believe this until you provide facts. I know that some employers make it extremely difficult to get time off to go to the polls. I know this. These are the same employers that fire people for being sick or taking time off to handle a family issue. These people will not give time for their employees to vote, and if they were mandated to, they’re likely to lie about it. The higher up you go, in terms of employment, the more flexibility you get with your time which includes vacation, sick leave and… time to vote.
In addition, there is one party that consistently challenges the mechanisms designed to help with voter turn out, mail in ballots and early voting, and more recently, automatic voter registration. And there are all these claims about widespread fraud which are never proven. As a member of a state that offers 100% ballot turn in, my ballot has been challenged three times over my signature. It’s obnoxious, and I don’t think they use handwriting experts or it wouldn’t happen, but I know they are validating these ballots because of it.
I don’t care about his “posting history”. I care about this individual post. I have no patience for people of any political stripe who think they can get away with telling me the sky is green.
So, given the existence of those districts, what part of what i said wasn’t true?
(I actually don’t recall when exactly I wrote that post, and thus exactly what it was responding to, but looking at it now I’m pretty sure that the things i actually stated there are in fact completely true)
Let us tout the virtues of democracy while we slowly destroy it.
The majority of states require employers give employees time off to vote, with the median time being 2 hours. http://www.findlaw.com/voting-rights-law.html
As noted earlier Hawaii has one of the lowest voting rates in the country and has pretty strong law, which fines employers who don’t accomodate employees voting.
Since most polling places are open longer than 8 hours (many 12 hours) why is it that not getting off work to vote could be a major problem anyway?
Depends on a particular person’s set of responsibilities (multiple jobs, family structure, etc.).
Looks like there are almost 20 states that don’t have laws, mine included. Of course we have the mail in votes which are frequently contested, but that helps. That’s still a lot of states that don’t have any laws at all and that doesn’t factor in how strong the existing laws are.
A lot of those laws sound great on paper but are ineffective in real application. Because polls are often open early or into the evening, employers can just say “Go vote in your free time, the polls are open after your shift” even if the average person has a lot of other commitments or dependents that they might need to dedicate their “free time” to.
The horror. Asking a citizen to spend 1 or even 2 precious hours of their free time to vote every year or two. This in a country where we spend on average 5 hours watching TV every day and very small percentage spend less than 2 hours (including streaming Netflix etc.). I have zero sympathy for those who find it inconvenient. Hell if I was king, I wouldn’t allow people to vote unless they had watched 1 debate, and could correctly identify some issues that candidate stood for. Build a wall, Trump, break up banks Sanders etc.
Maybe before you demand other people watch the news you should do some news watching yourself…
or do you blame the people standing in line for hours for this? And before you say these are isolated incidents… no they’re not. Politicians have been playing politics with polling stations for years.