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.

“Voters who were more favorable to Republican candidates turned out at higher rates compared with those who typically support Democrats,” the report’s authors write. “Shifting preferences among individual voters – though likely consequential in some races – was a much smaller factor in the 2022 midterms compared with turnout.”
- I'm not American but the last 2 elections that they had I definitely wouldn't of bothered voting . Trump vs Hilary and Trump vs Biden . In both cases I really didn't care who won . I don't think any of them actually care about the average American so why bother .
  
  2016 led to a massive removal of civil rights. 2020 was a vote for or against democracy itself. There was an enormous reason to vote.
  
  I don't think you're entirely wrong about none of them truly giving a shit about average Americans, but I would love it if you would reconsider the utility of voting at all. I'm a woman in Ohio with a trans kid, and the outcome of the last few state elections has directly affected us. Just like they weren't playing around when they said they were coming for our rights, please know that they're not kidding when they talk about banning pornography and birth control.
  It's one thing to not be actively helping as much as they promised (which is absolutely a thing that democrats do, I'm totally with you on that!), but it's another thing entirely to be actively working to turn the United States into some kind of christofascist oligarchy. Please, please vote.
  
  Caring for average Americans is one thing, but assembling a government that is honest, inclusive and benefits the vast majority of citizens is most important; and there are HUGE differences between the candidates you mentioned! It's this line of thinking that is causing so much apathy in our world today, and ultimately this will be humanity's downfall.
  
  Ribbit
  
  You are the reason Trump won. If you can't see the difference between Trump and Biden, then you weren't paying attention
  
  Which tells me you either weren't paying attention or truly didn't understand what a nightmare Trump and his ilk are.
  
  Interesting. That’s certainly not the view of most non-Americans I know. To what extent do you actively follow politics?
  
  There’s about one election per year in most places in the US, not just every four years for president.
  
  Yes both sides are bad but republicans are still way worse..
  It's not like Biden is an amazing president but he's doing a lot better than trump did and he's fixing some of the stuff trump fucked up.

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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