The joy throughout the United States and much of the world (with the exception, perhaps, of the Kremlin and parts of North Waziristan) at the election of Barack Obama was accompanied by this: relief. Relief that Sarah Palin would not have to get trained on use of the nuclear codes. Relief that voters clearly gave the Republican Party a collective boot after eight years of disastrous rule. And relief that despite widespread lack of confidence in the machinery of US elections, a Democrat was able to rally a large enough turnout to make it to the White House.
President-Elect Barack Obama's victory - and that of House and Senate Democrats riding his "coattails" - was impressive, there is no doubt about it. But how much bigger could it have been? With a turnout of 62.8%, how many of the 37.2% who did not vote did so because they were simply lazy, completely apolitical, or were turned off by the choices on hand? And how many of the tens of millions of non-voters would have voted, had they not been discouraged or disenfranchised?
Consider:
- At least 5.3 million citizens with felony convictions (with the exception of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens) lost their vote. According to Demos, "The United States is the only democracy in the world that takes the vote away from citizens who have completed their sentences."
- In states like Indiana, where voters must produce a driver's license, 673,926 or 14.7% of the potential electorate have no license. Though Obama won Indiana by 0.9% (some 25,000 votes), how much wider could his margin have been had this requirement not been in effect? See Andrew Hacker's discussion of the 2005 law's "disparate racial impact" in his New York Review of Books article, "Obama: The Price of Being Black."
- Sheer confusion. From London's Daily Mail on November 5: Some became so tired of waiting that they simply gave up and went
home, while others left because they had to return to work or to care
for their families. For many who reached the ballot box, the
process of voting was so bewildering that they took an eternity to make
their choice from a hefty ballot sheet that included votes for, as well
as the president, congressional lawmakers, local officials and a myriad
of legislative proposals.
- Sheer confusion, cont'd: Alternet has a minute-by-minute nationwide catalog of voting snafus, which they updated as voting continued into the night of November 4.
Right to vote, "convenience voting," or obligation to vote?
A couple of days before the election, I received from John McCain an email starting off "My friend" (it's a long story, but somebody put me on his mailing list, and it was impossible to take myself off). Anyway, Senator McCain said this: "I ask that you never forget that much has been sacrificed to protect our right to vote."
The sentence is in bold letters in his email, so it must be important to him. But does Senator McCain's party share his commitment to Americans' right to vote? The contrary appears to be true.
Think of the Bush Administration's politically-driven Justice Department under Alberto Gonzales. Wrote Scott Horton, prophetically, in Harper's September 2007:
"The enemy." If they mean that the majority of Americans - if they were truly encouraged to vote and allowed to vote - would vote Democratic, then maybe the GOP is right to consider "the real America" enemy territory. That's why voter registration efforts are often condemned as leading to "voter fraud," and why voter suppression efforts are almost always linked to the Republican Party. Check the nonprofit research group Issue Lab for a series of reports on how voter suppression has become the modus operandi of the Republican Party.
This basic dichotomy in American democracy - "Voters: the more the better" vs. "Voters: but only those you can trust to vote your way" - plays out in so many different ways at the local level (the nation's 3,000 plus counties who get to set the rules and establish the voting systems in their jurisdiction).
Eric Black, writing recently in MinnPost and quoting Curtis Gans of the Center for the Study of the American Electorate (CSAE), questioned the efficacy of "convenience voting systems" in increasing voter turnout. Gans slightly underestimated the turnout for last Tuesday's election, but his analysis of the impact of convenience voting ("no-excuse absentee voting," early voting, and "Same Day Registration") is worth consideration as we look to increasing voter turnout beyond the respectable - but not historically high - 2008 figures.
For my money, I like recent proposals floated in the blogosphere by Kevin Drum, Matt Yglesias, and Rick Hasen. Federalize Federal elections, put registration in the hands of the government, and issue Federal I.D. cards. And I would add: making voting mandatory, like it is in many European democracies, and scheduling election day on a weekend, not Tuesday, when millions of employees dare not take any time off for their civic duty.
I had to beg to get my ballot this year, and I'm not even sure my vote was recorded. I would gladly surrender the right to have my registration transferred out of the hands of Broward County Florida, which, after hanging chads of 2000, missing absentee ballots of 2002, managed this year to jeopardize 60,000 absentee ballots by labeling the outer envelope with the voter's party affiliation. As the local rag put it: this was "the election equivalent of a “Kick Me” sign that some mischievous kid tapes to your back." Jesus wept.
Give Presidential elections to the Feds. They're too important to entrust to the locals.
(free Obama "Yes We Did" sticker: MoveOn.org)