Compulsory Voting might help Americans reinvest in their own Democracy, but it won't solve the problem of the apathetic voter.
America has a Democracy problem. The problem isn't Democracy, it isn't the Republicans' far-right turn nor the Democrats' rediscovery of Progressive Liberalism, the problem isn't just one of lackluster careerist politicians or uninspiring centrist politics; rather, America has reached a point, where a confluence of various institutional and cultural breakdowns that have been in the making for decades are converging simultaneously to create a crisis of democracy, with only a small subsector of more conservative, more rural, more religious, more-likely-than-not white constituencies that participate more consistently in our political system than the rest of America. But why have so many ordinary citizens abandoned politics? and with it voting?
The most obvious answer is a distinct lack of interest on the part of many Americans; but that would be a misrepresentation of the American public. Surely some voters feel disenfranchised by strict voter-id laws, almost all of them enacted in Republican controlled state legislatures and signed by Republican Governors, ever since the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013. But there's more to this story than meets the eye.
Many voters are being disenfranchised in more subtle ways than the media obsessed Supreme Court decisions everyone focuses on, and many voters are being blocked from the polls for the simple fact of being working-class.
When asked why non-voters avoided the polls, many respondents have shown the most common answer to be that they were simply too busy to vote. These are often working-class, borderline-poverty families that simply cannot afford to take a day off from work, to go stand for hours in line; sometimes miles away from their jobs and homes. Many have children, and many cannot afford to pay for a babysitter while mommy and daddy go stand for hours in line waiting to vote.
Another discouragement to voting is the complete lack of tangible results from politics for the average working-class American. Over the last 30 years, regardless of which Party controlled the White House, Congress, or the Senate; the establishment agreed upon a Neoliberal consensus, despite the lack of public support, a program of deregulation was begun, along with the shrinking of the welfare-state, the steady retreat of State and federal assistance to local and municipal governments for public works projects, as well as to public Universities. The there were the endless wars in the Middle-East, the widening gap of wealth and income inequality, the constant barrage of misinformation by shady public service organizations, PACs and the rise of Super PACs after the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision. The Supreme Court's general usurping of various legislative powers, used to strike-down reasonable and bipartisan Campaign Finance Laws and New Deal programs that were on the books for generations. The Neoliberal consensus also brought us the stagnance and in some cases decline of wages for all but the highest echelons of American earners. All this, added to patterns that had already begun with the beginning of Globalization and regressive taxation that contributed to the complete disintegration of American support for it's own public institutions.
No longer do people feel like their voice matters. They see their nation's leaders as out of touch, often out of the country for weeks at a time, meeting with UN officials, traveling to Kenya to discuss foreign terrorist groups that most Americans can't pronounce nor spell; they see their elected officials traveling around to meet with the CEO's of the various Corporate titans on Wall Street; along with International Trade Lawyers moonlighting in the highest-end Five-Star Hotels in places like Zurich and Vienna. Rarely do our National leaders show up in one of our own small towns or villages. Rarely if ever do they come to speak to their constituencies outside of campaign season, when all they want is our money and vote. People feel more alienated than ever about their leadership.
Overtime, this disconnect begins compounding, the disconnect becomes a gulf between struggling families and aloof politicians. Eventually, these people have given up on the voting process all-together, they've come to believe that their votes are as meaningless as the soap-operas that so many of the long-term unemployed avoid watching at all costs.
But what I view as the largest obstacle to enthusiasm to voting is the breakdown in the culture of civic duty. This will be far more difficult to address and isn't something that a simple law change or executive action is going to fix. As much as I support the idea of Compulsory Voting, I highly doubt it will be the magic pill that proponents suggest it will be.
However, Automatic Voter Registration could kickstart a renewed interest in politics for young adults. Similarly, Compulsory Voting could achieve the same thing, but liely with far more opposition along the way. also, with Compulsory voting, there will be concerns from the public about the inevitable fines that would accompany any such law. Would it be fair to take money from workers who decide their paychecks are too immediately important to forgo? Many people may not understand, and they may see the fine as some obscure penalty in the distant future.
Under a Compulsory voting system, those that feel limited in their political choices may see write-in candidates and protest votes as their only way to express their discontent.
Another priority to expand voter participation should be a Government financed effort to tackle the second most stated reason for avoiding the polls: illness and disability. Though some states have eliminated some of this problem by creating a mail-in system of voting such as that of Oregon.
Other helpful ideas might include lowering the voting age to 16 or creating a Federal Bureau to administer all voting and to universalize the practice. Ensuring that eveyone who is elligle to vote can. (Think the cases in Florida under Jeb Bush when thousands of legal voters were kicked off the roles days before the 2000 Presidential election.)
But what I see more broadly is a disconnect and lack of understanding with how our government functions, what it is, what it does, how to participate in it, and why it's so important that everyone who is eligible participates in voting and more. Participation in the political system involves more than voting in Presidential elections, something Democrats have only just recently come to realize, after such historically devastating midterm elections in both 2010 and 2014, following the rise of the tea-party in 2009, we must face the fact that Americans in general are filled to the brim with misinformation, they're poorly educated in Government function and have little understanding of how political movements are begun and how they gain influence. This kind of lack of direction was on full display with the Occupy Wall Street Protests in 2011. A vibrant inherently political movement with no goals, no demands, no structure, and no funding. Were it not for the fact that some very serious, hard-working black American activists decided to add demands to their platform, the #BlackLivesMatter movement could easily have gone the direction of Occupy.
But as valuable as protests may be, they rarely spur people uninvolved in the festivities to become more involved, unless you count honking their horn then I guess they move a lot of people.
At a time when most people are worrying whether to buy diapers or dinner or to just save the money to see if they can get both tomorrow, the many lower-income working families that wish they could change things, just don't have the time to wave flags, chant in the streets or run for office.
What we must do, and what I believe will have the largest long-term impact on the restoration and reinvigoration of our democracy, is to bring back Civics classes as an essential part of a child/young adult's education.
Before the days of interconnected everything, the "i revolution" as I've heard it described, most people; neighbors, community organizers and representatives met together on a regular basis in local Elk lodges and their equivalents, town hall meetings, town-council meetings, local Organizations and Nonprofits, even community co-ops. Another major source of community organization was local Unions, at a time when their strength meant something, Unions struck fear in the hearts of business-friendly politicians.
Today, these organizations are dwindling faster than the rainforests in the Southern Hemisphere. Social Media has rendered invalid the 20th Century model of community organization; and as a practice, the personal way most that most people engaged in face-to-face encounters to provide or negotiate services in their communities with their leaders, is near dead and with it we must discover new ways to engage a today's and the future's citizenry. A citizenry that will once again engage in ways we never imagined 30-40 years ago.
Most people don't understand their Government anymore, and what they see is a leadership that has created policies that shut out the voices of millions, while giving direct access to Wall Street through career politicians to create and write laws favorable to the donors, investors and other special interests.
Schools can serve as the first place where students learn the importance of American citizenship, the value of voting, and taking politics seriously. As American schools have become centered on high-stakes testing and the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) studies have become the focus of educational reforms. Such lessons as how to be responsible citizens are as vital today as they were when schools first included them in their studies. Unfortunately, by the time I entered school, in 1990, Civics classes had all but disappeared.
At some point America has lost its way. Glorification of money in the 1980's, replaced the Family and local community as the center of American life, and the collective values that used to be instilled in us all, were thrown by the wayside for :"budget cuts" and "personal responsibility".
But a citizenry uneducated to the complexities of our global order, world markets, and the way Neoliberal Capitalism has changed what it means to be an American, is a citizenry that cannot be expected to carry on the torch of representative democracy, and it certainly cannot be expected to know who to vote for or if voting even matters. It makes voting in a person's own interest nearly impossible. Most people don't even know (or care) what their candidate or candidates represents.
Compulsory voting will not be enough to change the ethos of 21st century politics, but bringing back civic engagement among America's youth could go a long way toward changing the current trend and reestablishing a flourishing democracy. The alternative could be a future of fascists and Corporate leaders.
-This Article first appeared on tremr.com by the Author in a discussion on Voting and Compulsory Voting Laws.
