The American Voting System Needs To Change

Only 57% of the total V.A.P (Voting Age Population) voted in the 2012 United States presidential election. In fact, the last time that voter turnout has gone above 63% was nearly forty-eight years ago when Richard Nixon won his first term in office.

A study from the Pew Research Center ranked the United States the fourth worst in a group of thirty-four countries. Another study from the Pew Research Center also showed that the millennial voter turnout rate was an incredible 30% lower than that of the older than sixty-five age range, 42% to 71%. What this shows me is that we need an overhaul when it comes to political voting. With the fifty-eighth presidential election only four months away, this problem pertains to Americans now more than ever. While total voting turnout has never been high compared to European countries, the gap between the two is at one of its highest points in history. Countries such as France, Norway, and Italy have had voter turnout in the low 70%’s for their latest presidential cycle. When you compare the United States meager turnout of 57% to Belgium and Sweden’s voter turnout which was in the mid 80%’s we have to ask ourselves, why do so few people vote?

When looking at articles from the Washington Post and Al Jazeera America about midterm elections, there was two or three reasons that were said far more than any of the others. Hilariously, the top reason, which was 28% of all registered voters was that they were “to busy” to vote. This was followed by stating that their vote did not count and they were not interested at 16% and 10% respectively. These numbers were taken from the Census Bureau voting report. These reasons show the general disinterest of the American people when it comes to politics. With that in mind, you cannot put all of the blame on the citizens. Events like voter fraud or manipulation in places such as New York where thousands of peoples votes were deleted or cast for them during the democratic primary does not exactly give American voters confidence that their voice will be heard.

The problem has been established, nobody can argue that, now how do we solve it? There are a few ideas that political analysts generally think are the best ways to improve voter turnout, online voting systems being the biggest. Many European countries like Norway and France have online voting systems for voters so they do not need to leave work or go to a polling site to vote. What is truly embarrassing about this, and goes to show you how far behind the United States is that these countries have had these systems in place since the mid 1990’s. In European polls showing voter turnout after the online systems were implemented showed a drastic increase in total voting percentage.

By implementing a similar system back home, we open the doors to hard working men and women who cannot get off work to vote a chance to have their voices heard. We obviously need security measures and voter fraud checks in place, but I am confident that if numerous countries have used this system for over fifteen with little to none amount of problems, then we can do it too.

Another way of helping voters out which is widely agreed upon having a national holiday on voting day, or at least having the day on a weekend. While it would be better to require businesses to allow their employees time off to vote, the least controversial way would be just make it a holiday.

While making changes to the system is necessary if we do not change our attitude towards voting then making new ways to vote, or make voting more straight forward will be useless. We have a serious problem with youth voters where many think that not voting is some type of rebellion against the system, where in fact that is the complete opposite. No change is going to come when we do not vote, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. I think we may just be insane. Campaigns such as the now infamous “Vote or Die” have not exactly helped public mind change when it comes to voting. A side note on this one that I find hilarious is that one of the original founders P. Diddy abruptly left the campaign because he found voting to be a “scam”. I swear you could make an Onion article on that entire trainwreck of a movement.

Back to a more serious note, the age of butthurt millennials needs to come to an end. Complaining about the political system on Twitter will not make change, all it does is make you another pawn in the game of the political circuit.

This brings me to another point I want to talk about, social media’s influence on voting. A study that was published in the journal Nature showed that just having a small icon on a Facebook page asking if you have voted or not increased the 2012 midterms turnout by over 340,000 votes, or a .14% total increase. This was just from a Facebook icon, imagine how much more people would vote if it was staring them in the face on their social media accounts.

While there are some very real benefits from social media, there are significant downsides too. Instead of watching presidential debates, a good amount of people gets their knowledge from what others are saying on Twitter or Facebook. While this could potentially be fine, most of these sources are biased in one way or another. Instead of listening to information from the actual source, you receive the information convoluted two or three times over before it gets to you.

While this may not be the only way to increase voter turnout, it is a step in the right direction that us Americans deserve. For too long we have been trapped in voter turnout mediocrity. I honestly do not think we will ever get as high as Sweden or Norway, or even above 70% for that matter, but we can improve. If we build a foundation of trust with our political system, and changed the mindset of the voters, people may finally want to vote.