Cultural Factors Influencing Voter Participation

One factor that decreases voter turnout is the misconception that a person’s vote does not matter. Alienation is a feeling of personal powerlessness that includes the feeling that the government does not care about individual people. These people believe that the government will not respond to their concerns even if they do vote. The problem is that a large portion of the population shares this attitude. People can have negative

The authors’ hypothesis in Democratic Practice and Democratic Theory states that requirements for voters exist to be followed but are difficult to follow, so only little of the electorate meet the requirements. The authors state that every voter should seek to have the requirements of great voters, including having great interest in politics, participating in discussions, and knowing much about politics. The authors declare that politicians have to accept the behavior of the voters. Also, even though the requirements are not met, the authors add that a positive side as the distribution of participation helps create

Voter turnout is the rate by which people vote in elections. The simplest way to calculate a given election's turnout rate is to compare the actual number of voters with the voting-age population. “Voter turnout in the United States is among the worlds’ lowest.” (E.S. 371) The graph below taken from an article written for the Huffington Post in 2012, illustrates how poor United States voter turnout has been as compared to other industrialized nations. Our voter turnout

The Funnel of Causality model describes voting behaviour in terms of socio-demographics, party identification, issues, and candidates. In this essay I will focus on issues because they can be compared between countries. An issue is essentially a problem that is perceived to be important, and there is an actor with “ownership” of the issue, meaning that there is someone who is thought to be “the best man for the job” so to speak. The economy isn’t an issue because you can’t have “ownership” over the economy. Issues are important because they explain a lot about voting behaviour.

The debate over compulsory vs. non-compulsory voting is a complex subject matter to say the least, that has sparked much controversy in recent times with almost all strongly in favor of one side of the argument and or the other. This highly polarized debate has sparked in popularity in recent times because of a quote by former president Barak Obama in which he said that “It would be transformative if everybody voted”. It is believed that if everyone voted that could and was eligible then the domination of hard core partisans within the political system would be in part quelled as the candidates went where the votes are, which would be away from the extremes. Moreover some studies show that mandatory voting decreases the rates of uninformed voters within an area as voting becomes more of a civic duty than right. While the institution of compulsory voting would have a short term effect of increasing the rate of uninformed voters,

“From 1972 to 2012, citizens 18-29 turned out at a rate 15 to 20 points lower than citizens 30 years older” from this data we can conclude that age is a demographic that affects voter turnout (What Affects Voter Turnout). Voting laws such as those of identification or registration impact voter turnout. For example, the introduction of early voting was meant to increase voter turnout, but has in fact decreased turnout (What Affects Voter Turnout). In response to the argument that the system lowers voter turnout rate, one should take the many other variables that contribute to turnout into account.

There are many factors that have led to a culture of low voter turnout in the State of Texas. For example, Texas being a poor state with an uneven distribution of wealthy plays an important role. According to the text book, “the poverty rate is important because the poor and less educated, in the absence of strong parties to persuade them to go to the polls on Election Day, have a tendency to stay home”. Because the poverty rate is so high, it makes a big difference on voter turnout when the poor don’t

Voting in elections is the most important form of participation in American politics. Even though this is true, America has a very low voter turnout. This is defined as the percentage of eligible voters who actually show up to vote. Only 6 out of 10 Americans vote in the presidential election, and it is even lower for midterm and local elections (Ginsberg, 306, 2013). Voter participation today is substantially lower than it was in the 19th century. Although, the number of people that could vote was lower than it is now, considering that women and other minorities were not allowed to vote until later in the century (Schulman, n.d). Age, gender, education, income, ethnicity, and religious affiliation all have differing effects on voter turnout rates. Education and income are the top factors that determine whether someone votes or not. Someone with a higher income and educational knowledge about voting are more likely to vote verses someone with a lower income and no education. If citizens do not have any knowledge about the voting process or candidates, they become discouraged and do not turnout to vote. Also, Texas is one of the states with the lowest voter turnout rates in the country and ranks in the bottom third of voter participation (Ginsberg, 821). Reasons for this are because Texas has a lower average age than the national average, and young citizens are more likely not to vote. Also, Texas has a political culture that is traditionalistic and individualistic. In a traditionalistic political culture, the political and economic elite discourage voting. In an individualistic political culture, the people choose not to vote because of “ real or perceived corruption in government” (Ginsberg, 821). Texas has a tradition of keeping a decentralized government, which causes numerous elections. Voters become overwhelmed with the

Industrial Countries all over the world have seen a steady decline in voter participation; Great Britain is a great example of this. The country has witness turnout in elections falling slowly as time pass. However, the election of 2001 dropped the country from their average of 76% voter turnout to just a 59.4% turnout. Comparatively, Australia, a former colony of Britain, has enjoyed high and steady voter participation since 1924 because of the implementation of compulsory voting. This system has proven to be not only effective in bring voters to the polls, but also effective in improving Australia’s democracy. By evaluating these two countries with similar political structure; one can see the difference in compulsory voting turnouts

In this essay, I would like to discuss the major obstacles to voting, recent changes to overcome voting barriers and the political influence of changed rules. Low turnout in the U.S. reflects that there are obstacles for people to voting and changes to overcome these obstacles may also bring new problems to different social groups. I will elaborate on these aspects in the following parts.

How does a 65 million year old seashore affect the voting habits of the deep south? What relates a Mel Gibson movie to the independent nature of the Appalachian community that leads to perhaps the most famous family feud of all time? Learn what makes Americans unique based on where they live and how that can affect their political beliefs. In this course, we will travel across the state of Colorado. We will take walking tours around the different neighborhoods of Colorado Springs, travel to the towns in Eastern Colorado, such as Limon and Burlington, and travel to some ski towns, such as Aspen and Breckenridge. During these travels, we will conduct surveys to see how voting patterns and political activism changes even within the state. We can

Voting equality means that when it is time that a decision on policy be made, each member must have an equal and effective opportunity to vote on a policy, with all votes being considered equal. Along with effective participation, voting equality is essential in constituting a democracy. For voting to be effective and equal, not only do citizens have to have reasonable access to voting locations, but they must also physically turn up and vote, something that does not always happen in practise. For instance, in the 2012 Presidential Election, 123,714,407 eligible citizens voted compared to 131,142,144 votes cast in the 2008 election (McDonald, 2012). That means there was a decrease in voter turnout of 3.4 percentage points from 2008 (61.6%) to 2012 (58.2%) (Andrews et al., 2012), prompting questions as to why 7,427,737 less voters participated. When a mere 58% of your country’s population chooses not to vote in the

The topic I would like to research for this term paper is the election process across cultures. My paper will examine how leaders are elected across cultures, the specific electoral process in that particular culture, the ways the elected leader of a particular culture influences the people, and the perception that people of that culture have about their elected leaders and the electoral process. I want to explore this topic because I have a strong interest in politics and the Presidential election in the United States will occur during the semester which allows me to link a current event and my topic for the term paper.

However, a regime is no longer democratic the moment it violates at least one of the norms that make elections democratic, hence the name electoral authoritarianism. Furthermore, there are intrinsic powers of representative institutions in driving the dynamic of stability and change in such regimes. Thus, there is motivation for rulers to manipulate them and gain electoral legitimacy without bearing the risks of democratic uncertainty. The manipulative tactics used by authoritarians to repress are assumed to render electoral authoritarian regimes more resilient. The article also assumes the manipulation of representative institutions to create imperfectly informed citizens are identified as more authoritarian than

Third, there is no electoral system that translates the voters‘ preferences exactly into electoral results. Besides the sheer feasibility problem, there is the option of manipulating the electoral system in favor of a certain ethnic group, gerrymandering, or the usage of suffrage restrictions (Dryzek 2005: 226). Thus, the