Elections Realignments I II III IV V Turnout Problem Critical Realigning Elections The Divided System Interest Groups Why do groups Organize a Theory of Collective Action In the U S on a good day we get about 50 vote turn out If you compare the U S to other established democracy We don t compare Presidential elections are higher and midterm elections are lower Very low for the Texas Primary In the U S we do not go to the polls Explanations for why people don t vote First rational choice explanation Cost benefit analysis It is a hassle and costly to vote And then the benefit how do you feel afterwards Not did you just show up at the poll but did you show up ahead of time to register 30 days ahead of time The costs can be high of registering and then voting so the idea is that we are asking too much So we put our elections on a Tuesday Asking people to vote before after and during work and asking people again to do a little extra work Depending on state you live in some polls close as different times In other countries you don t have to register and sometimes they will make Election Day a holiday so it isn t too much of a hassle or to put Election Day on the weekend Seen some in other countries Trying to make it easier on as many people as possible When Russia had first democratic elections they put elections on a Monday and they made it a holiday unintended holiday Everyone turned it into a three day weekend and didn t come back to vote The deal is trying to make it where the cost of voting is low We did try to make registration easier In the 90s we post the motor voter act With the motor voter act you can register to vote when you renew your driver s license There was a lot of enthusiasm of this Problem is that with motor voter act more people register to vote The problem is that this did not affect turn out A lot of people registered but more people didn t turn out Second explanation is the with drawl argument Political scientist have researched who is not voting what groups People of low income and low education are less likely to turn out So they dig deeper and ask further question People who are low income and low education are political ethicacy Political ethicacy is the idea that you can affect the political process That you are part of the political process People tend to think they are not part of the political process and that they can t affect it Groups tend to be low in political ethicacy tend not to vote Unemployed are very unlikely to vote When you ask further questions to figure out what is it about being unemployed It is thought that the unemployed do not have the link to the community when you go to work you talk about not politics but other things as well and you feel connected and a part of the community Not having a job takes that away from you The unemployed takes that away from you Gap in turnout rates between high and low education voters In the us high in education voters are much more likely to vote Third explanation Comparativist explanation Institutional explanation What might be part of the problem for us is our electoral system our institution We know from previous lectures that all things combined lead us to two major parties All the third fourth are forgotten It is possible that our system leaving us with the two big parties and losing all the rest Then some of us think that we don t have a party that suits us or that represents us And so we might as well not even vote because your vote will not make a difference for the third party We don t vote because we don t like our options Proportional representation systems The research shows that PR systems tend to have higher turnouts from 10 to 15 It s possible our system is turning us off of voting The cost is too high to go vote for somebody that is not going to win Maybe if the third party had a better chance of winning more people would vote All of these explanations when pulled together seem to give a better explanation of why we don t vote
View Full Document
Unlocking...