Return to Common Sense

Excerpt from Chapter 1 End Voter Registration as We Know It Universal Registration – What's So Hard About That? Why do so few Americans vote? We are not a nation of slackers, yet voter turnout rates consistently rank near the bottom of all democracies. In the United States, a typical off-year election sees turnout at 47 percent. Even in a presidential race, in recent years roughly four out of ten voting age citizens haven't made it to the polls. Turnout is rising somewhat, but it still lags far behind that of other countries. Social scientists routinely dissect the electorate to find reasons for our habitually low turnout. Explanations range from disillusionment with government and weak political parties to fraying bonds of civic engagement, such as the decline in labor unions, political party clubs, fraternal organizations, and even, as Robert Putnam has pointed out, bowling leagues. This is all true, but insufficient to explain the phenomenon. The fact is, most people who are registered actually do show up to vote. In 2004, nearly nine of ten who were registered cast a ballot. That's true across racial and ethnic lines. Both whites and blacks voted at almost the same rate, if they were registered in the first place. But roughly one quarter of eligible citizens is not registered, and the rates of registration vary. If you want to ask where the voters are, you have to start by asking where the registered voters are. Significantly, our Byzantine voter laws keep many people from registering, and thus from voting. These are laws we can and must change. Why do we have voter registration? As a hoary southern saying has it, "When you see a turtle on a fence post, it didn't get there by accident. "We are still governed by the restrictive registration system first put in place a century ago to stop certain European immigrants and former slaves from voting. Former presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford headed a commission that concluded, "The registration laws in force throughout the United States are among the world's most demanding ... [and are] one reason why voter turnout in the United States is near the bottom of the developed world." The obstacles to participation weren't put there "by accident." At the time of Lexington and Concord, laws sharply limited who could vote: only whites, only men, and only property owners, which meant roughly six out of ten white men. Raucous debates over who could vote roiled the newly independent colonies. John Adams, for his part, drafted a constitution for Massachusetts that limited voting only to taxpaying property owners. Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine, on the other hand, led the fight to abolish property requirements in Pennsylvania. Franklin wrote scathingly: Today a man owns a jackass worth fifty dollars and he is entitled to vote; but before the next election the jackass dies. The man in the mean time has become more experienced, his knowledge of the principles of government, and his acquaintance with mankind, are more extensive, and he is therefore better qualified to make a proper selection of rulers-but the jackass is dead and the man cannot vote. Now gentlemen, pray inform me, in whom is the right of suffrage? In the man or in the jackass? Over the next half century, the new country surged westward. Bewigged aristocrats no longer defined its political culture. After 1824, when Andrew Jackson of Tennessee won the most votes but lost the presidency in the House of Representatives, his supporters organized to change voting laws by removing property restrictions, and swept him into power. Turnout nearly tripled in four years to 78 percent. By the 1850s, property requirements as a precondition to voting were gone almost entirely. The United States began to move closer toward a wide and participatory democracy. The next great struggle was over race. Lincoln's "new birth of freedom" proclaimed more than an end to slavery.Waldman, Michael is the author of 'Return to Common Sense', published 2008 under ISBN 9781402213656 and ISBN 1402213654.