Voting and Democracy
by Anthony Stahelski
For the second time in the 21st Century we will have a President who lost the popular vote. This democracy-threatening consequence is the result of several structural flaws in our voting system.
First almost half, 45 percent, of eligible American voters did not vote in the 2016 election. The raw numbers are even more astounding: of the 240 million American citizens 18 or over, only 132.5 million actually voted, which means that over 100 million Americans who could have voted chose not to vote! Surveys of non-voters show that the number one reason for not voting was “too busy”. Other top reasons include “not interested” and “did not like the candidates or issues”. The first reason could be addressed by shifting voting day to the weekend, or by making it a national holiday. However these proposed changes would not address the concerns of the “not interested” or “did not like” groups.
These non-voters require more than just date changes. They require some democracy reeducation and some mild coercion. Voting is both a basic democratic privilege and a basic responsibility. It should be a fundamental requirement of citizenship in a democracy. If citizens do not vote democracy will ultimately fail. Those who do not vote are transferring the burden of maintaining democracy onto those who do vote. They are democracy free-loaders, enjoying the benefits of democracy without doing the work of citizenship.
Thus I advocate mandatory voting in national elections. Australia, among other democracies, has had mandatory voting for over a century, leading to very high voter turnout rates without harming its democracy. The penalty for not voting is a small fine, which hardly qualifies as major coercion. Critics of mandatory voting make two points: one, making voting mandatory is undemocratic, and two, non-voters are too ignorant to make an informed vote. The ‘undemocratic’ argument ignores the fact that all social/political systems, including democracy, have mandatory collective obligations, such as paying taxes. The ‘ignorance’ argument is elitist. If we are going to follow this elitist logic we might as well go back to having only property owing white males vote.
Second, it is time to abolish the Electoral College, by amending Article II of the Constitution. The Founding Fathers had to make compromises to get all 13 states to ratify the Constitution. The Electoral College essentially gave the smaller or less populated states disproportionately more power than their size alone dictated, and the electoral inclusion in the Constitution helped assure their ratification support. Now however, 233 years later, the overall effect of the Electoral College is to turn national elections into state by state elections, and to overturn the popular vote five times. Governance in democracies is supposed to be determined by the will of the people, not by artificial entities like states. The system essentially denies the equality of the vote, by making the votes in certain states more impacting on the outcome than votes in other states.
Third, the length of the presidential campaign needs to be drastically shortened, for several reasons. First, shortening the campaign would decrease the amount of money needed by all candidates, and would hopefully decrease the fund-raising advantage that some candidates have over others. Second, the short American attention span would be more focused on the serious issues raised by the campaign if the campaign was shortened. Third, American cynicism about politics and politicians might be reduced. A shorter campaign season could be accomplished by having a series of debates in May and June, and a single national primary election day in July, rather than spreading the primaries from February to June. This would also reduce the disproportionate impact of certain states, such as New Hampshire and Iowa, on national elections.
None of these structural changes would be easy to accomplish, but so what? Do we really want the current very flawed, democracy-threatening system to continue into the future?
Anthony Stahelski, is a a professor of psychology at Central Washington University in Ellensburg Washington.
photo credit: USEmbassyPhnomPenh U.S. Election Watch Party via photopin (license)