Understanding American Politics by Douglas L. Koopman & J. Matthew Wilson

Author:Douglas L. Koopman & J. Matthew Wilson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Published: 2013-09-20T16:00:00+00:00

PART FOUR

PARTICIPATION AND POWER

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Town-hall democracy, one of the cherished images of American politics.

CHAPTER NINE

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CIVIC PARTICIPATION IN AMERICA

Almost 9 out of 10 eligible French voters showed up on voting day in May 2012 to cast their ballots for either Nicolas Sarkozy or François Hollande. Unlike France’s neighbors Germany, Belgium, and Italy, the law does not require that citizens vote. Moreover, lineups on election day in France tend to be long and slow, conditions that might be expected to discourage many citizens. France’s high voter turnout in its 2012 presidential election cannot be ascribed to proportional representation, a system that is usually associated with higher voter turnout than is a winner-take-all system. Instead, it was generated by the enthusiasm of millions of French citizens who perceived the two rivals for the presidency as representing distinct ideological directions for France and whose willingness to spend part of a dreary spring day in line at a polling station was motivated by their desire to make a difference in the outcome. This was no fluke. Turnout had been as high in the 2007 presidential election and for the same reasons.

In 2004, Americans faced a choice that was, arguably, no less momentous than the one facing the French in 2007. Indeed, in the eyes of non-Americans in countries throughout the world, the choice between the Republican President George W. Bush and his Democrat opponent John Kerry was nothing less than a choice between two very different paths for America’s role in the world. It is possible that non-Americans perceived the stakes to be higher than did Americans. However, the circumstances of the 2004 election, particularly the war in Iraq, and the fact that the contenders for the presidency appeared to represent very different points on the American political spectrum ensured that Americans, too, believed that the outcome of the 2004 presidential election was important. In the end, however, fewer than 6 out of 10 eligible voters cast their ballots. Four years later, in an election in which, for the first time, an African American was the presidential candidate of a major political party and when the level of enthusiasm for Democratic candidate Barack Obama was high, voter turnout was only a few percentage points above what it had been in the previous presidential election. And in 2012, when President Obama and his Republican challenger Mitt Romney presented voters with pretty distinct narratives about America and very different solutions for the way forward, turnout fell to about 57%, the lowest turnout in a presidential election since 2000. Roughly 7 million fewer voters cast their ballots in 2012 compared to 2008.1

In most presidential elections, almost half of all Americans eligible to vote in presidential elections do not. Voter turnout is even lower during off-year elections when control of Congress is at stake. And things just get worse if one looks at the percentage of Americans who vote in state and municipal elections and on the hundreds of referendum questions that are asked in any

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