Voter turnout numbers tend to always be depressing to those who hold lofty ideals about democracy.
For example, only about 60 percent of registered U.S. voters cast ballots in the 2016 presidential race, despite the years-long leadup and clanging hoopla surrounding the race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. If citizens weren’t planning to vote in that one, you wonder exactly why they’re registered.
The number of people coming to the polls tends to be even lower in elections not featuring the president. This week’s congressional primary drew just less than 17 percent of Marion County registered voters. And that was not the exception; Turnout was similarly anemic statewide.
In one sense, you can’t really blame the voters on this one because all of the races on the Marion County ballot are locks for the incumbents. U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker and U.S. Rep. Steven Palazzo are virtually guaranteed another term in Washington.
The only exception in the state was the 3rd District Congressional election to fill the seat of the retiring Gregg Harper, which is heading to a runoff between Madison County DA Michael Guest and former Mississippi State basketball player Whit Hughes. Yet that district only covers roughly a quarter of the state’s voters, so 75 percent of us had little to vote for.
Still, you wish in our representative democracy that more people cared about policy issues, which affect us all in very real ways whether we vote or not. There are several ways to approach the voter turnout issue.
Wyatt Emmerich, longtime journalist and owner of this newspaper, takes the position that low voter turnout isn’t necessarily a bad thing. “If you don’t care enough to vote, you probably don’t care enough to be educated on the issues, in which case better to let the more informed carry the day,” he wrote in a recent column.
The opposite approach is used in Australia. According to a Pew Research Center study, it has the highest voter turnout rates in the world with 90.98 percent in 2016. There’s a simple explanation: If you don’t vote, and can’t provide a “valid and sufficient reason,” you face a $20 fine.
Beyond that it’s a civic duty, Australia makes an interesting point why it requires voting: “Candidates can concentrate their campaigning energies on issues rather than encouraging voters to attend the poll,” the Australia Electoral Commission says.
That makes sense. Much of American politics is wasted on a cynical game of driving out certain kinds of voters. Also, the heavy voter turnout among older Americans — and low rate among younger ones — has us trapped in a system where Congress is scared to make the necessary changes to Medicaid and Social Security despite an obvious need to shore up their longterm finances as less workers pay in and more retirees live longer.
But don’t expect compulsory voting anytime soon in America. We’re too independent for that, and our government has enough trouble compelling people to do the basics like take care of their kids that we suspect mandatory voting would be outside the government’s capability of enforcing.
— Charlie Smith
