The problem of low American voter turnout

by Anna Schlauch

Elections and voting are the most important aspects of democracy. Elections underlie the goals of democracy as they allow citizens to have influence over who is in office and how the government is run. Without the ability to vote, citizens would not have choices or a say in what is important and accountability of officials would not be ensured. A successful democracy requires elections and therefore could not exist without them.

Unfortunately, even though citizens know how important voting is to a successful democracy, voter turn out in America is very low compared to other democracies. In the United States, there are 222.5 million eligible voters, or citizens who are at least 18 years old. Among the population of eligible voters, about 65% are registered to vote, which narrows the population down to 146.5 million citizens. To even further narrow the number of voters, about 65% of register voters actually show up on election day to cast a ballot. Over the 20^th century, voter participation averaged only to about 50% in American presidential elections. It is no surprise that several other countries, such as Spain, France and Italy, have a much higher voter participation than this low percentage. These numbers clearly show that American voter turn out is without a doubt very low.

 In my opinion, the low voter turn out in our country is a problem. The main reason I believe so is if there aren’t enough people showing up to vote, the outcome of an election will not actually reflect the general population’s interests and needs. The main goal of American government is to represent and serve the people, but this cannot be accomplished if the people do not have a fair influence over who is in office. The only way to ensure that the most accountable candidate is chosen for office is if well educated and well informed citizens take the time to vote. If such citizens choose not to show up on election day, there is no way to ensure that the voice of the most informed voters will be heard. I also believe that a current low voter turn out will only lead to an even lower turn out in the future, so I think something needs to be done now to fix this problem before it gets even worse.

Although there are many possible ways to fix the low voter turn out in America, not all are reasonable. I think one reasonable way to improve American participation in elections is to make registration easier. As I noted earlier, about 65% of eligible voters are actually registered to vote. The only way to increase this number is to make registration easier. In America, states set registration laws, so there are 50 different sets of laws for voter registration. I believe that if there was one set of laws, registration would be perceived by citizens as much easier and more reasonable. This reform would make voter registration more uniform and would ensure that a citizen does not need to re-register if he/she chooses to move to a new state. A reform to make voter registration easier by making one uniform set of registration laws for the whole country would definitely help fix voter turn out in America. If registration is less of a hassle and more permanent, more citizens will register to vote, therefore increasing voter turn out in America. The only way to ensure a successful democracy is to increase the number of Americans who vote, something that will be achieved if voter registration is reformed.

April 2013 Prompt: Voting

For the last few weeks, we've been studying elections and voting behavior.  By now, you know that free elections are the backbone of successful democracy.  It seems fitting, therefore, to consider a couple of questions about voting.  Consider, is low American voter turnout a problem?  If you don't think so, please explain why not.  If you are concerned about low American voter turnout, then please identify and explain one way we can improve American participation in elections.

Budget Politics

by Jason Smith

I was willing to cut defense spending, non-defense spending, home mortgage interest     deduction and I didn't want to expand health insurance coverage. In total I saved $675 billion. I definitely chose to cut military spending because we need to stop focusing on international issues and use that money to focus on domestic issues. This perpetual war needs to stop. I was willing to cut non-defense spending because in my opinion private institutions can and should step up and give back with all of the money big business has. I understand education is a part of non-defense spending, but our education system is horrible and spending money on a horrible system makes things worse. The whole system needs to be changed if money is going to be spent there. I cut the home mortgage interest deduction because I think that could potentially help the housing market. Health insurance is also a system that needs reform even with this new reform because health insurance companies are beyond corrupt so the system needs to change before money is spent.

I wouldn't impose any more taxes because consumers shouldn't have to pay for problems that weren't caused by them. Carbon taxes are probably the dumbest idea for taxes ever because all it is doing is putting more money in the wrong people's wallets. I wouldn't reduce social security benefits because I don't know much about it.

Lower class people, government workers, and the military are affected by my cuts the most. Let's be honest though, this spending wasn't truly helping lower class people anyway. Poverty has to be dealt with in other ways and not simply by spending on things that don't help people in the long-run. I don't know how this makes me politically because my opinions aren't one sided. 

Fiscal Crisis

by Rina Dhawlikar

The fiscal crisis has been an ongoing issue in the United States Congress for the last several months because the United States is spending a lot more money than it’s revenue allows. While both Democrats and Republicans agree that the budget deficit needs to be reduced, they have had serious disagreements to come to a conclusion. While Republicans, especially the conservative right wing members do not want to touch defense spending but drastically cut Medicare and social security, democrats have taken the opposite view.  President Obama set up a By-Partisan Simpson-Bowls Commission to address this issue. However, the president did not follow through and accept their balanced approach. This led to the sequestration cut at the end of 2012, which ordered significant cuts in defense and government spending while allowing the bush era tax cuts to expire.

 In my opinion, the U.S congress should take a balanced approach to bridge the deficit gap. While cutting spending by two dollars for every one dollar in increasing taxes, this will lead to rapidly solving the fiscal crisis. Currently, the defense budget remains very big from the cold war era and defense requirements have not been cut down even though it ended in the last century.  Although new security threats and terrorism have emerged, these threats in my opinion are better fought by an international coalition of countries, which could substantially decrease the US financial burden. With the baby boomers aging, there is a significant increase in Medicare spending. I would make Medicare a need based program following means testing, making the rich pay more to get the benefits since they can afford this. But I would not cut Medicare for the poor and needy. Also, I would subject social security, so that the needy will get more than the super rich. This will cut the entitlement budget substantially in my opinion.

The budget can only be balanced if there is an increase in revenue as well. I agree with the Bush-era tax cuts being allowed to expire, which would generate income for the government.  Also, I would cut tax loopholes used by the rich such as Carried Interest. The cuts I make will be balanced and affecting the rich more than the needy, poor and the elderly. This will lead us to fiscal responsibility and prosperity through free market capitalism.  I think my views are more consistent with that of a left leaning moderate/ independent looking at both sides of the argument but making a decision somewhere in the middle, being fair.

The Difficult Deficit

by Val Renda

I have to say, I’m glad I’m not the one having to come up with solutions to minimize our national debt. This survey just proves how difficult it is to cut certain things out of the national budget while keeping others. The first time I took the survey, I realized I only made one cut of $115 billion by eliminating the deduction for state and local taxes. I made this cut because to me, this was an alternative to ending the expiring tax cuts, but on a lesser scale. I know this means that taxpayers would essentially pay more in taxes because they wouldn’t be able to itemize and deduct state and local taxes on income, etc., but it seemed like one of the more plausible options.

I took the survey again, after realizing that I didn’t do a good job of cutting anywhere near the $900 billion, and made cuts up to $533 billion that time. I was unwilling to cut Medicare benefits and Social Security benefits because I felt that the cuts would have too big of an impact, considering the size of the cuts. I also chose to keep the expansion of health insurance coverage. I decided to reduce defense spending because a huge part of our budget is for defense spending, and the proposed cuts over increments of time are reasonable and effective. I also chose cuts to non-defense spending, although this was a difficult choice because I think the amount was more than I would want to cut. I think small cuts over increments of time to certain departments wouldn’t cause too much of a problem. I chose not to create a carbon tax because although it might be effective with reducing carbon emissions, I think it would cause a lot of controversy and I also think that individuals shouldn’t be taxed based on their carbon footprint. Overall, I’m not sure that my cuts would make sense, and I think that it shows that my political values are somewhat neutral, but that I feel certain programs are essential to the nation.

Unfortunately, I don’t fully understand what all of these cuts would mean to different people in the nation, so I’m glad I’m not the one making the final decision. 

Budget Politics

by Ryann Tucker

When I took the You Gov survey for cutting the national deficit, I made a lot of choices that I feel reflected my political values. I think I made a lot of great choices in what I think should be cut. Altogether I'm pretty sure I cut more than 900 billion dollars even though Ms. McMillen advised that it wasn't the best idea. I just wanted to see if I could cut things that made sense and to me, my choices made a lot of sense. I was willing to impose a 6% national sales tax. I felt that this was a great idea because we already have a 6-7% sales tax on items in most states and then in a few states like Delaware there is no sales tax. I feel like a nation wide sales tax is completely fair. It only seems fair. I also reduced non-government spending. I was not 100% sure what this would mean but my goal was to make it to 900 billion and the amount of money that was going into non-defense government spending was a really large number. Third, I decided to reduce military spending, the president has already decided to cut this so I figured that this was a freebie. I think that historically, we have spent way too much money on on the military in the past. So I think its really wise to cut our military spending. Lastly, I was most confident in my decision to raise taxes for people with incomes over 250,000. I think that taxing someone that makes a 50,000 salary and someone that makes a 500,000 salary is not fair at all. The general idea of taking money away from people who can barely feed their families is wrong in my opinion. If it was up to me I would eliminate unnecessary taxes for people that make less than 40,000 a year but that is way controversial for Americans to handle and is ethically wrong for some people to have to pay and others not to. So its only fair to just raise takes for those that can handle it. If you take away 10% of someones money that makes 500,000 a year they still have over 400,000 left for themselves. If you take away 10% from someone who makes 50,000 they have 45,000 but it is difficult to live off of 50,000 a year so I can't comprehend making someone live off of even less than that. 

I decided not raise taxes for everyone, reduce medicare expenses, and take from social security.  My choice not to raise takes was because of what I said before. The idea that those who make more should be required to give more. I didn't want to reduce medicare expenses because personally I think that medicare is extremely important. Old people and everyone else that needs health insurance should be able to receive it. The idea that someone could be turned away from receiving medical attention just because they don't have the money breaks my heart. I think greed is the main factor behind why out medicare/ medicaid system in the US is just starting to become better. I think that big companies are greedy and selfish and want to make money so they make medical insurance expensive. I am a firm believer in the idea that if you are sick you should receive help. There is no reason why someone who is hurt or sick should not receive care. 

I was raised in a democratic household so I already know that my choices were more democratic and would mostly affect the upper/ upper middle class. The only choice that I made that would directly effect them is the raising of taxes for people with incomes of over 250,000 a year. 

March 2013 prompt

As the federal government slips into the mandatory sequester it set for itself, consider how you can solve this problem for Congress.  Read this Slate article.

  

Then, take the You Gov survey Slate designed and outline your plan for cutting the debt.

You don't have to reach the 900 billion target (I could only cut 626 billion, but that's more than I think is wise anyway), but you should think it through and once you complete the assignment, write a response that explains:

1.  What you were willing to cut and why you made those cuts.

2.  What you wouldn't cut and why you wouldn't make those cuts.

3.  Who bears the brunt of the cuts you made?  What does that tell you about your political values?