The Cost of Non-Participatory Voting

American elections are a passionate display of one of the greatest achievements in human civilization: republicanism and democracy. Yet, there are obstacles that interrupt this progress and it is the onus of the American people to overcome them. How our civilization deals with the negative feed-back loop that is non-participatory voting will define the path we carve for ourselves. Should voter participation continue to decrease, our government will increasingly become more susceptible to corruption. The effects of non-participation are measurable, and our world of laws would be tangibly different and more egalitarian should all Americans vote.

Consider the 2016 Presidential Election, where Donald Trump won with slim margins, ranking in the bottom 20th-percentile of all American Presidential elections. Within the states that were critical to his victory, such as Michigan, Pennsynvania, and Wisconsin, a mere eighty-thousand voters spelled defeat for the Democratic challenger, Hillary Clinton. That is only 6% of all voters in those three states, and less than 2% of all US voters. Simultaneously, two million Michiganders, four million Pennsylvanians, and one-and-a-half million Wisconites did not show up to the voting booth.

Power is derived from the vote in America. Each vote counts for exactly one; one American, one voice, one choice. When summed, our votes change the world. It is a conundrum that millions choose not to participate in democracy, when doing so could reshape the landscape of the United States in great ways and stiffen our government against calamity and catastrophe. Just as large numbers of voters actively pass laws, large numbers of non-participatory voters let laws pass. It is the law of large numbers that underlies the principle that allows democracies to function; a single entity is unpredictable, but millions of unpredictable actors will engage in a predictable way. This predictable thing would be truer to the actual average American political position, and would therefore encourage compassion, cooperation and centrism, elements that are sorely missing in modern American politics.

For decades, the Baby Boomers (born 1946–1964) have dominated American government. This dominance is strictly because of how many of them vote. 69% of Boomers turned up to vote compared to 46% of Millennials, which plainly means older Americans wield greater power. Furthermore, young Americans are voting in ever decreasing numbers. Politicians, with the operatives who support them, learn that they need to appeal to this high-voting cohort for victory. This makes real the priorities of the older generations, and simultaneously leaves the younger generations with significantly less political power. How schools, hospitals, and law enforcement operate in any given town are determined by the voters, yet even fewer Americans, particularly the young (looking at you, fellow Millennials!), show up to vote for these kinds of elections. To gain political power, these voter blocks need to show up to the polls or else politicians, both current and future, will not work to represent them. A cultural shift needs to occur across the country if it is to change, and American youth should strongly consider voting as they enter adulthood and ostensibly choose what kind of world to live in.

Time favors the younger generation becoming the majority of the electorate. By 2018, Millennials will out-number Boomers as a percent of the total population. There are real issues facing the United States. All people, especially young Americans, will have to learn to work and raise families in this future environment, and sooner or later will become responsible for it. Urgent issues like global warming and the rise of domestic and foreign terrorism need our attention now, and will become more difficult to manage as time goes on if not addressed head on in the present. The views within each generation are equally diverse, but there is no doubt that the values and priorities of each generation are different, and government leadership is not meeting many young Americans values.

Because inherent political power is granted to the masses via the vote, operatives, such as connected lobbyists, industrialists, and secret donors, benefit from the externalities of non-participatory voters. This comes at the expense of natural politicians, who can only succeed with the support of voters in their respective communities, and who strive to represent their communities positively. As a result, where there is low voter turnout, there is greater potential for corruption. The United States has grappled with disenfranchisement since its inception, and has successfully worked to extend suffrage, first to non-property-owning white men in 1828, then non-white men and freed slaves gained the right with the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, and finally women in 1920. Despite these historic changes, laws have continued to pass in various state legislatures that disenfranchise voters. Over time, repeated efforts to pass new, restrictive laws begin to pass in part because eligible center-left non-voters abstain, clearing the path for all kinds of regressive legislation. This created nearly one-hundred million Americans that are disinterested in voting, nearly half of the eligible voting population. The most effective way to combat this in the short-term and long-term is to encourage voting.

There are a lot of overt and covert methods of voter suppression, such as practices that require the type of ID at the voting booth that specific groups typically do not use in daily life, burdening them with tracking a form of ID that they otherwise don’t need. There are groups that work to address this and present new legislation to end the practices, however this will only take effect if it passes in state legislatures, which will require pressure from American voters that there will be a price to pay for politicians who support restrictive voting legislation on election day. This is fundamentally true with every issue facing the United States. Only meaningful legislation passed in state-houses and in Congress can create the foundation for the future, and at the very bottom of this foundation — the cement — is the American voter.

It is a fundamental imperative and Constitutional guarantee that all Americans can vote. Easy access to voting is the only way in which this right is exercised. Restrictions on what is acceptable at the voting booth have historically done more harm than good by limiting more citizens from voting than it stops fraudulent votes. Requiring states to administer effective voter identification carries great liability on the government to ensure eligible identification is readily accessible to all segments of the population, and could easily be twisted to use this physical identification to deny access and control voting populations. The reality is that these restrictions only negatively effect voting outcomes.

Our strength as a country has always been in the variety of our ideas, and the United States has only grown more resilient and wise as voting has been extended to more and more citizens. Those among us who can, need to vote as an act of personal expression, and as an example to future generations that the American people own the American destiny. Each American who gets to vote is descended from this legacy, and we owe it to our our fellow countrymen to vote. Stewardship of our democracy must be our primary objective, the thing in which all Americans can rally around. This shared destiny, where the old, the young, the rich, the poor, is how we take responsibility as free people, as family, as a country.