By Jeffrey Page

Americans have never been enthusiastic about voting. Whether they saw it as a chore, or maybe something that interferes with a nice day off from work, they’ve avoided the polls to a degree that makes a laughing stock of a country governed by elected leaders.

Since the 1820s, the nation’s highest voter turnout was recorded in 1876 – a full 100 years after the colonies declared they would no longer be ruled by British kings and princes – when just 81.8 percent of eligible voters actually cast ballots. Even in the Great Depression of the Thirties, the highest turnout we managed was 65 percent.

And in the 11 presidential elections from 1972 to 2012, the average turnout was an anemic 53.6 percent, with the vote of 1996 falling to 49 percent. Some people say it doesn’t matter who’s in office so why bother voting? That argument will not stand the next time you use Obamacare, the next time you need an abortion, the next time there’s a vacancy on the Supreme Court, and certainly not the next time Paul Ryan proffers a budget that eliminates funding for early education.

Remember the public service announcements about the importance of voting? The message that suggested a free society could remain free only as long as its citizens exercised the franchise? Americans are deaf to such appeals now.

Some people see this lack of interest in the electoral process as dangerous. Others see it as an opportunity.

We’re supposed to be a nation that treasures its freedom in the voting booth. But now, some politicians see an opportunity, through statute, to make voting more difficult and inconvenient. Thus they discourage certain voters from going to the polls while encouraging others to pull the appropriate levers or slip their ballot into the computer.

Given our national apathy, who’s going to complain?

The New York Times recently ran an extraordinary story whose headline was shocking, even in this time of rabid partisanship in Congress: “New GOP Bid to Limit Voting in Swing States.” The report basically was a catalogue of measures that Republicans are supporting around the country. The truth here is that the Republican Establishment is engaging in voter suppression, which kind of negates the GOP’s eternal yammering about being the “party of Lincoln” and striving for a government of, by, and for the people.

In a nation where we don’t carry in-country passports, some Republicans would force people to carry voter ID cards to prevent election fraud – a rare offense. The existence of pre-Election Day voting makes casting a ballot convenient and easy, especially for working people but some on the right would cut the number of such “early days” or eliminate them altogether.

In Ohio, the governor killed a measure that allowed people to register and vote on the same day, another convenience. Ohio feared voter fraud, but again, there have been no reports of voter fraud.

Great American politicians believe that in a democracy, you encourage as many people as possible to get to the polls and, if needed, you provide assistance for them in the voting booth.

Great American cynics believe that party comes before nation so you educate your base, and then make voting as complicated and inconvenient as possible for the people whose votes you can’t count on.

Tags: Jeffrey Page, Paul Ryan, voter turnout

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 17th, 2014 at 5:20 pm and is filed under Jeffrey Page. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.