They really don’t, you know. More Iraqis vote than Americans, as a percentage of the population. Iran has a higher rate of participation in the democratic process. So do 128 other countries. So WTF is up with Americans?
Compare U.S. voting with foreign voting and it’s not a pretty sight. Americans are less apt to vote than are people in other old democracies, in new ones, in dangerous places, dirt poor ones, freezing cold ones, stinking hot ones and highly dysfunctional ones.
Even that theocratic “axis of evil,” Iran, has bragging rights over the United States in this regard. So does chaotic Iraq, where an estimated 70 percent of voters cast ballots in December parliamentary elections.
They invented this process. Have they moved on to something else, discarding representative democracy like an outdated (but still superior to the alternatives) Betamax player? If so, what can it be? Looking at the current model, I’d have to invent a new term; as the British have a Constitutional Monarchy, I’d have to say the Americans have a Constitutional Dictatorship. They also, apparently, have very little faith in the transparency and accuracy of the voting processes, although still more than the facts seem to justify.
They vote but not always. Compared with Americans who regularly cast ballots, they are less engaged in politics. They are more likely to be bored with the political process and admit they often do not know enough about candidates to cast ballots. But they are crucial to Republican and Democratic fortunes in the Nov. 7 midterm elections.
They are the intermittent voters: Americans who are registered to vote but do not always make it to the polls. They differ significantly from those who vote regularly. For one thing, they’re less likely to be married than are regular voters. Intermittent voters also are more mistrustful of people compared with those who vote regularly. They also are less angry with government, though no less dissatisfied with President Bush than are regular voters, according to a survey conducted Sept. 21-Oct. 4 among 1,804 adults by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press in collaboration with the Associated Press.
The survey also finds large differences between Americans who are not registered to vote or vote only rarely, and intermittent or regular voters. The two groups at the bottom of the voting participation scale are much less likely than regular or intermittent voters to believe that voting will make much of a difference. They also are less likely to agree with the statement: “I feel guilty when I don’t get a chance to vote.”
Americans won’t vote if they don’t think it will get counted, and they won’t vote if they don’t like the options, and they won’t vote if the election process itself is typified by negative advertising.
So what will get them out to vote?
Golly gee, that’s a toughie. Probably this rather motivational video from South Park will work. It’s a spiffy initiative to encourage those kiddies to get out, engage proactively with the democratic process and the society in which they thrive, and cast their votes for the candidate they feel best represents their interests in Washington. And it speaks directly to the things that concern kids most nowadays.
It’s called Vote or Die.
raincoaster 
It is similar to the Rule of Rock.
Love Iron Maiden or die!
You know that even people who love Iron Maiden are gonna die, right? I mean, you know this, right?
Nononono – Iron Maiden and its fans are immortal! We all smoke young women and chase around after loose weed – – –
I think the biggest problem is related to the two you identify, “Americans won’t vote if they don’t think it will get counted, and they won’t vote if they don’t like the options.” Most people here are really disconnected from the political process– neither party does much to involve people in the political process between elections, and when they do reach out to people its a fundraising phone call. So when you combine that with the fact that neither party consistently fights for working or middle class folks (and then factor in widely publicized voter fraud in 2004 and 2000), it makes a lot of sense that most folks here don’t think there vote will make a difference.
@Archiearchive: My very first roomate in the army spent three hours of the first night explaining to me how Iron Maiden held the key to the gateway to another universe. He was explaining this, he said, because “someone’s got to carry on once I go (there)”. He was invalided out on what the US Army used to call a “section eight”, and what was loosely referred to in the Canadian army as “loopy as a jumbo box of Cheerios”.
Personally I thought he was officer material, if only because he could never be president.
But back to our muttons:
The United Stated didn’t invent the democratic process–they were just the latest round of people crazy enough to think it could work as the designated governing system of a nation for “ever”. Rome went from monarchy to republic to empire as well.
As for voting–if I had to deal with black box voting I’d quite likely bail too. Or use my absentee ballot to ensure it got counted properly.
But there’s another cause that isn’t adressed, and explains a lot about why the fixed “democracy” of Iran gets more voters out: Happy people with full bellies don’t vote. And on the evidence those stomachs are dramatically full.
Also, given the political awareness of the average citizen in any democracy (ie. none to speak of except where it refers to taxes or lifestyle issues), many people reject voting as too complex a responsibility.
This is another reason I love our constitutional monarchy. Once the Queen dies we may be stuck with the vestiges of a collection of inbred twits at the top of the heirarchy, but at least we won’t have voted them in there.
And on the day no-one turns up to vote, we already have a system in place.
Rome? You’re joking. The Roman model was looked to for inspiration, but what I’m talking about here is modern representative democracy, and that comes from the US far more than from France, from Rome, or from Holyrood (was that where the Magna Carta was signed? I was so young then…) Jefferson and the others were classicists, but they did sit down and invent a new form, you must admit.
I agree that people are complacent, but people do have some searching impulse within them as well, that usually draws them into social engagement of one kind or another. Our society is very prosperous and very hedonistic, but I think that wouldn’t decimate voting as it has without the issue of faith in the process. The process of voting for Americans is an exercise in clearly-deluded faith, and there doesn’t seem to be anything to be done about it.
Maybe it’s the frustration, the sense of being caught between the wheels of huge interests with no particular way out, so why even pretend.
–Hmm. That’s another factor, what used to be called the Post-Watergate Mentality back about 1972.
Nixon is under-appreciated. He was probably the first pol to show the fundamental discrepency between the neccessary face of democracy the White House must wear, and the machinations that take place at its heart.
But it’s the only game in town, and if you don’t bet, you can’t win anyway.
And of course there’s the “what’s in it for me” non-voter. Sort of an obverse of the “I’m alright, Jack” voter.
All in all, perhaps the country actually needs a short spell of dictatorship. If the Republicans hold the House and Senate of course, they’ll get one anyway. Or possibly just more of one.
I have no idea why people don’t vote, but it’s awfully pathetic that some people get all excisted about voting for Bush because he “brought democracy to Iraq” and then they don’t even vote because they don’t feel like it or whatever. In a lot of ways though with the electoral college maybe people think that their vote won’t matter unless they’re in a swing state (which actually they might be right about). Problem is that too many people think that way so really their vote would have mattered more than they thought.
Agreed. Devolving power to institutions has made us believe that we, ourselves, are irrelevant to the process and that participating is a burden rather than a right.