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Module 8: Lecture 2
Voter Turnout
Table of Contents
Section 1: Why Turnout Matters ................................................................................................................... 2
Introduction............................................................................................................................................... 2
United States ............................................................................................................................................. 2
Section 2: Social Group Explanation .............................................................................................................. 4
Overview ................................................................................................................................................... 4
Age............................................................................................................................................................. 4
Income....................................................................................................................................................... 5
Alienation and Voting ................................................................................................................................ 6
Education................................................................................................................................................... 6
Limitation .................................................................................................................................................. 7
Section 3: Rational Choice Explanation ......................................................................................................... 8
Rational Choice Explanation ...................................................................................................................... 8
Costs and Benefits of Voting ..................................................................................................................... 8
American Case ........................................................................................................................................... 8
Section 4: Voter Suppression ........................................................................................................................ 9
Implication on Voter Suppression ............................................................................................................. 9
South ......................................................................................................................................................... 9
Motor Voter ............................................................................................................................................ 10
Felon Laws ............................................................................................................................................... 10
Newest Laws............................................................................................................................................ 10
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Section 1: Why Turnout Matters

Introduction
One of the most common discussions about representative democracy is whether it matters
who votes:

• It is common for people to be encouraged to vote. As one of many examples, Rock the
Vote is a non-profit organization with the primary goal of convincing young people to
vote.
• Others have argued that not everyone should vote:
o It is not uncommon for people to argue that the uninformed or poorly educated
should not vote
o In the original US system, only people with significant property were allowed to
vote, since they had “a stake” in the system.
It is also not uncommon for people to dismiss the importance of voting based on distrust of
the government. The argument goes that since politics is rigged anyway, what is the point of
actually turning out to vote.
There are two key responses to these negative views about voting:

• The legitimacy of any democratic government is based on the foundation of voting,

and large groups of people not voting can hurt that legitimacy.
• Voting is about pressuring politicians. They are more likely to do what benefits the
public when their political careers are dependent on the public will.
• Following the previous point, if people could trust the government, there would be no
need to vote. Distrust of politicians is even more reason to vote, to pressure them.
Voting might be less about smart people making smart decisions and more about group
influence on the government. For any faction within the public, they are most likely to influence
government policy if:

• They turn out to vote in large numbers.

• They vote in a block based on certain issues.
For example, evangelical Christians gained significant influence over the past few decades
by turning out in high numbers and voting based on issues like abortion.
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United States
In the American context, these questions are very important because the United States has
very low turnout rate:

• Voter turnout in the US is consistently much lower than most other representative
democracies. While it is not uncommon for 70% to 80% of eligible voters to turnout in
representative democracies, in US presidential elections turnout is usually around 55%
• Voter turnout has also decline significantly over the twentieth century. It was around
60% in the 1960s, dropped to around 50% by the 2000 presidential election, and then
rose up to around 55% in 2016. However, in the 2020 presidential election, it jumped to
62%.

In this lecture we will explore two questions:

• Why is voter turnout in the US so low?

• Why has it increased recently?
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Section 2: Social Group Explanation

Overview
So, why is turnout so low in the United States? One way to approach this question is by
looking at the social groups that are least likely to vote. Generally, there are three variables
that seem to influence whether people vote:

• Age: Older people vote more than younger.

• Education: Better educated vote more than less educated.
• Income: More affluent vote more than less affluent.

Age
One of the most widely cited aspects of voter turnout is that younger people are less likely
to vote than older people, as is shown in the graph below. It shows that in the 2008 election
only around 43% of 18 to 24-year-old Americans voted, as compared to around 70% of
Americans age 66 to 74.

Source: Rcragun (2009a). Voter turnout by sex and age [image]. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Why are older people more likely to vote than younger people? There are range of
explanations:

• Habit: Young people are newer to voting than older people, and over time older people
have gotten used to turning out each election
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• Life stability: Young people are more mobile, which means that they need to take
greater steps to get registered to vote, learn where polling places are, etc.
• Sense of investment: Everyone is impacted by election outcomes, but the impact can be
clearer to people who have, for example, purchased homes.
• More power over own time: See below.
As one gets older, one’s responsibilities generally increase but one’s control over time also
increases. Consider, for example, that people’s first jobs are often highly regulated but later jobs
can require both more work and more freedom.
This change is important because it relates to the cost of voting. As a professor, for
example, I have a great deal of freedom over when I vote. Most others in professional offices
can simply take time off to vote. But in early jobs, someone has to ask permission to leave for
errands, and often there are specific times that they need to be at work that are heavily
regulated.
I would argue that control over time is a factor that influences all three groups in the US
that have low voter turnout.

Income
The next graph shows the relationship between income and voting. It shows, for example,
that around 40% of the poorest eligible voters (those with less than $15,000 annual income)
vote, but that around 75% of eligible voters over with incomes over $150,000 vote.

Source: Rcragun (2009b). Voter turnout by income [image]. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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Why do more affluent people vote more often?

• They generally have more power over own time. Professionals can more easily take time
to vote than those working in retail or a factory, for example.
• They have more resources than the poor. For example, well off people generally own a
car and can afford babysitters or daycare. One of the most common groups in poverty in
the US are single women with young children, who simply cannot work or even do basic
errands because they are full-time caregivers.
• The poor often have a sense of alienation.

Alienation and Voting

Alienation is a feeling of separation. For example, when one is ostracized from one’s friends,
one is alienated. Politically, alienation is when people feel separated from government. It
creates a sense of having no influence and often leads to conspiracy theories. This feeling is
much more common among the poor and poorly educated.

Education
Finally, the less educated are less likely to vote than the well education, as is shown in the
graph below. This is because:

• Education breeds a sense of social responsibility.

• Education gives people a wider perspective. It becomes easier for people to understand
how government affects them, and how choosing who governs could impact their lives
• Uneducated people are more likely to have a sense of alienation. This is an
outgrowth of lacking the perspective mentioned above.

Source: Rcragun (2009c). Voter turnout by Education [image]. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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Limitation
While the social group explanation can help us understand the dynamics of voter turnout in
America, it has significant limitations. For starters, it does not explain why the US has lower
turnout than other countries, since all countries have young, poor, or uneducated people. It
also does not explain why voter turnout has not been rising over the past century, since:

• Americans live longer today than in the early twentieth century.

• Americans are better off than a century ago.
• Americans are better educated than a century ago.
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Section 3: Rational Choice Explanation

Rational Choice Explanation
One of the ways to understand voter turnout is through rational choice theory, which was
presented earlier in the course:

• Rational choice theory starts with the assumption that people are driven by raw self-
interest
• All decisions are effectively based on cost-benefit analysis. Overall, people will do what
gives them
o The greatest gains
o At the least costs.

Costs and Benefits of Voting

Rational choice theory comes to the surprising conclusion that voting is not rational. For
starters it has real costs:

• The citizen has to get informed about government and the candidates.
• The citizen has to physically go to a polling place.
• The citizen has to make a choice.
However, there are few benefits to voting:

• In any election, there are a large number of people who vote.

• It is therefore extremely unlikely that one person’s vote would actually be the decisive
vote.
• Therefore, it makes little sense to put the time into voting.

American Case
However, at a less extreme level, the theory might help explain voter turnout as well the
impact of voter suppression:

• Benefits: Voters become less likely to vote when voting is pointless, such as when the
outcome is already clear.
• Costs: When the cost to voting is higher, voter turnout would decline.
Applied this way, the theory might explain why voter turnout is lower in the US then
elsewhere:

• Many elections in the US are already predetermined because constituencies are often
overwhelmingly Democratic or Republican.
• In presidential elections, even when the outcome is in doubt, the outcome within many
states is already known ahead of time.
• US laws often make voting more difficult than in other countries. I will focus on this
next.
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Section 4: Voter Suppression

Implication on Voter Suppression
One argument is that voter turnout in the US is low because the US government puts up
more barriers to voting than other countries. Some of these barriers might be accidental. (For
example, the US has most elections on Tuesdays, when people work, while most democracies
have them on Sundays.) Others appear to be acts of voter suppression.
Voter suppression is when government or other political actors explicitly try to reduce the
voter turnout of some groups in the population for political gain. There are two general types of
voter suppression.

• Barring people from voting: These are the types of laws that prohibit certain people
from voting.
• Increasing the cost of voting: These are the types of laws that make voting more difficult
for some people but not for others.
Both of these types have existed in American politics.

South
The classic examples of barriers to voting were the explicit voter suppression laws in the Jim
Crow South. These laws, which primarily targeted African Americans, included
1. Poll tax:
a. $1 to $2 per year
b. In today’s money, $7 to $ 15 a year;
c. These taxes were also cumulative. If a voter had skipped any elections, they had to
pay for each previous election they missed as well as well.
2. Literacy Tests:
a. Beginning in the 1890s, southern states began requiring people who “couldn’t prove
that they had a fifth-grade education” to take a test that determined whether they
were literate enough to vote.
b. In truth, these tests were designed to be impossible to pass.
3. Grandfather Clause:
a. Sometimes states had a clause that said that if your ancestor could vote before
1867, you were exempt from other requirements, like
i. Literacy tests
ii. Poll tax
iii. Residency requirements
b. The point was obviously to exclude everyone whose ancestors were slaves.
Poll taxes, literacy tests, and other measures used to explicitly bar people from voting were
outlaws with the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
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Motor Voter
Before 1994, getting registered to vote could be very difficult, which some say was a form of
voter suppression. Citizens would have to go to a specific office to register during regular
business hours (i.e., when they were at work), often months before the election.
In order to reverse this, the Clinton administration enacted the National Voter Registration
Act of 1993, often called Motor Voter, with the intention of making it easier for people to
register to vote, including:

• At the Department of Motor Vehicles;

• Through the mail;
• At government offices (e.g., public assistance);
• On military bases

Felon Laws
Most states have restrictions on whether felons can vote. In some states that restriction
applies to when they are incarcerated while for other states it continues while they are on
parole.
In a handful of states ,felons are effectively barred from voting for life. Moreover, these
states often use wide definitions of felon, leading to many people being denied the right to vote.
In Florida, 10% of all adult citizens and over 20% of African American adult citizens were barred
from voting because of this law.
A Florida referendum in 2018 made this law unconstitutional, but most ex-felons have not
had their voting rights restored.
During the 2000 election, Florida took this a step further with what was called the Florida
felon lists:

• A list was created of all people in Texas and Florida who had felony convictions.
• Anyone with name similar to one on list was thrown off the election rolls. This meant
that many people who were never convicted of a crime were barred from voting.
• There was a high percent of African-Americans thrown off the voting rolls – enough for
George W. Bush to win in Florida, which in turn led to him becoming president.

Newest Laws
In recent years, especially because of COVID-19, many states have instituted new methods
for making voting easier.

• Many states, including Georgia, allow people to vote early.

• Because of the pandemic, states have also increased who can vote via absentee ballot
(i.e., through the mail) as well as allowed people to place their ballots into drop boxes at
polling places.
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At the same time, Georgia and other Republican states have enacted new laws making it
harder for certain people to vote. These laws include:
• Requiring photo identification to vote.
• Reducing the number of polling places, especially in urban areas. For example, the
average wait times in Atlanta to vote are often as high as six hours, far longer than in
rural areas of Georgia.
• Creating more difficult restrictions to vote using absentee ballot.
• Reducing the number of drop boxes, forcing people to vote inside.
• Prohibiting third-party groups from giving water or food to people waiting in line to
vote.
Political scientists are generally convinced that these laws are intended to shrink turnout in
ways that increase the number of elections Republican candidates win. There is much
disagreement over whether they will be effective

• Unlike Jim Crow or the felon laws, which actively bar people from voting, most of these
new measures simply increase the cost to voting. People might be willing to pay that
cost in time and effort to vote.
• In 2020, voter turnout increased across the US. It is unclear if this increase was because
(a) voting has become easier or (b) because it was seen as an extremely high stakes
election with Trump on the ballot.