| Numbers, numbers, numbers. They are
always being tallied, reported, and analyzed at election time, and this
year, with the closeness of the race between Texas Governor George Bush
and Vice-President Al Gore, the river of numbers seems to be turning into
a flood.
Numbers are open to interpretation, though. In a
November 8 article on the Fox
News website, David Koeppel writes, "It was one of the closest presidential
elections of all time and the cliffhanger scenario elevated voter turnout
in battleground states like Florida and Pennsylvania." He goes on to say,
"In exit polls around the country voters revealed that they believed their
vote to be crucial and could make a real difference in the race."
I'd like to look at few other numbers, though. These
come from the website for the Federal
Election Commission (FEC).
50.7: The percentage of the voting age population
(VAP) that turned out for this week's election.
49.08: The percentage of the VAP that turned out
for the presidential election in 1996.
32: The number of years it's been since as many as
60% of the VAP voted in a presidential election.
36.39: The percentage of the VAP that turned out
for the off-year elections in 1998.
30.: The number of years it's been since as many
as 40% of the VAP voted in an off-year election.
Perhaps 50.7% is "elevated", but I hardly would call
it a cause for national pride. I would call it, instead, a national disgrace.
As a nation, we take pride in our position as a world
leader and the lone remaining superpower. Every Fourth of July, we toast
ourselves as "the birthplace of democracy," "the sentinel of freedom,"
and various other bits of patriotic self-congratulation. It's certainly
true enough that there is some truth in each of these statements.
However, information from the Center
For Voting And Democracy (CVD) paints a somewhat different picture.
Using data from the Almanac of European Politics and Congressional Quarterly,
a chart on their website compares the turnout of voters to elect the main
legislature of various democracies. They drew their figures coming from
elections ranging from 1994 to 1998. The United States voter turnout, from
1994, was 38%.
Here's another number.
21: The number of countries on the CVD list with
a higher turnout than the United States, led by Iceland, with 88% voter
turnout in 1995.
It gets better:
19: The number of countries on the CVD list with
a turnout of at least 61%.
1: The number of elections since 1962, either Presidential
or off-year, where the FEC records United States voter turnout as at least
61%. This was in 1964.
We frequently hear people talk about how our government
seems out of touch with its citizens, and there certainly is no shortage
of instances where that seems to be the case. However, when we, as a nation,
take our elections so lightly that 50% turnout is considered "elevated",
perhaps that case can also be made that the citizens have not chosen to
remain in touch with the government, and for that, we have nobody to blame
but ourselves. |
