> It's not obvious to me that higher voter turnout leads to better governance.

The assumption is based on the fact that young people have low turnout, and these turnout initiatives are almost universally about getting young people who lean/are left to go vote. Most "get out the vote" drives are not really about improving our democracy and are actually about supporting Democrat politicians and their policies, which is why they target specific demographics that are likely to vote the "right way" (Samantha Bee's audience being a blatant example here of people that would vote for Democrats).

The phrase is "mobilize your base".

Both Republicans and Democrats have GOTV strategies. Republican efforts have faltered of late, because they have trouble recruiting / enlisting volunteers, comparatively. You can see this in how campaign spend their money. Advertising vs doorbelling.

It now occurs to me that age may be a factor in campaign staffing. Whereas 10 years ago, Democrat rank & file were blue hairs. Think Vietnam war protestors, old school labor, academics. Now the party is much younger.

It's been a long time since I've been to Republican party events, so just from what I've read, their party rank & file hasn't seen that kind of turnover.

> Both Republicans and Democrats have GOTV strategies. Republican efforts have faltered of late, because they have trouble recruiting / enlisting volunteers, comparatively.

Republican GOTV efforts have arguably reached their limits, because their base is effectively fully mobilized; Republican leaning voters are much more reliable voters than Democrats, and much more effectively politically organized (even when not overtly through party/electoral organizations; often through highly politicized religious/organizations, including churches that overtly flour, without consequence, the prohibitions on electoral activities that are attached to church 501(c)3 status.)

OTOH, very recently there are simply fewer Republicans, as there's been an exodus from identifying as a Republican or Republican-leaning independent over the last couple years. The people outside the committee base that a GOTV effort might seek to draw in—always a smaller share on the Republican side—are increasingly just not there at all on that side.

Of course, the flip side of this is Republican active voter suppression strategies targeting Democratic-leaning constituencies, which continue to escalate (including strategies executed through state policy, especially since the elimination of key parts of the Voting Rights Act.)

> It now occurs to me that age may be a factor in campaign staffing.

Absolutely.

> Whereas 10 years ago, Democrat rank & file were blue hairs. Think Vietnam war protestors, old school labor, academics. Now the party is much younger.

I think the first part is significantly exaggerated, but it's true that as more Millennials (where Democrats have a huge edge that's remained roughly constant since adult Millennials were around to poll) have come of age but Boomers shifted from a big Democratic advantage (that only existed during the second half of the George W. Bush administration) back to a competitive demographic—I’m not ignoring GenX, its just been a pretty constant slight Democratic lean and already fully into the eligible-to-vote age range, so it has neither the coming-of-age nor shifting-preferences effects of the surrounding generations—the Democratic Party has gotten younger faster than the Republicans (whose only solid lead, by generation, is with the Silent Generation.)

Source: http://www.people-press.org/2018/03/20/party-identification-...

> Millennials (where Democrats have a huge edge that's remained roughly constant since adult Millennials were around to poll)

Source?

As best I can tell, the Democrats' advantage in the 18-29 age group peaked with Obama's election in 2008, and has been decaying since. '08 == +32; '12 == +24; '16 == +18.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/behind-trump...

A lot of Bernie supporters hated Clinton. Also, Johnson received 1.5m more votes over his last run. Meaning plenty of Johnson & Stein supporters hated Trump.

Polls like this illustrate why approval voting is useful. List all the candidates, check the ones you like.

Meanwhile, Democrats continue to gain advantage in the generic congressional ballot.

Young people need to be targeted because old people are already turning out in droves, and driving policy that favors them.

Lots of interesting points in this thread. I have some experience in this field and will respond (off the cuff) based on that:

@ JackFr2 > It's not obvious to me that higher voter turnout leads to better governance.

True. Post-election governance could be poor even if 100% of eligible voters voted. And since we don’t suffer from complete groupthink (,yet), an result in such a scenario would still leave things to be desired for some voters. However, what people too often miss is that voting is a signaling mechanism. And that’s why it’s important for people to vote for any candidate who they believe best represents their interests, even if they are “fringe” candidates who are unlikely to win. Example: Ross Perot lost in his bid for the US Presidency, but politicos definitely took note of how many people voted for him and that has and still ripples through the game today.

The issue about the quality of governance (QoG) stems from what I like to call ‘outsourcing’. The general populace has outsourced the management of their affairs to people who, by nature, have their own interests; many some of which are actually competing interests. So, when they vote, pat themselves on the back, and then check out, they generally enable being provided “more of the same.” Also, low voter turnout is definitely looked upon favorably by insiders, (until it isn’t and then, only temporarily).

@ brookhaven_dude > Young people need to be targeted because old people are already turning out in droves, and driving policy that favors them.

Thanks for saying this. I’ve been downv-oted in the past for saying as much, but it’s the simple truth. There’s a clip of a WH Press Briefing — all kids— in which Obama gets asked about voter cynicism and such. He starts talking #s. I forget the specifics, but IIRC, he says that the presidential-election year youth vote is ~20%. In non-PE years, it, of course, falls. If one extrapolates some guesstimates for local electoral politics, things are probably even worse. So, before we even start accounting for lobbying and economic$, the “youth vote” has pretty much relegated itself to being a bit player in the general equation. If the collective is happy w/what’s happening, then fine. But if the collective really wants to be considered and to see some changes then it needs to get in the damn game. That means regularly showing up to vote (intelligently) and having a persistent and strong pre$ence in the places where policy is made. Period. The collective also needs to take ownership of this instead of waiting around for/ whining about how someone should do the heavy-lifting and organize something for them (outsourcing). And as I’ve alluded to, money is unfortunately a necessary part of this game until the rules and/or game have been changed. So, that means that the avg. person, unfortunately, has to take an interest in and actually make(ing) sound economic decisions.

TLDR: - Vote @ the polls, on the phones, inboxes and in the legislative halls (no one on the inside of anything is taking marchers and the like seriously. they probably don't even know that exist);

- Numbers matter & low voter turnout is/can be a tool;

- Mobilize (yourselves) or be immobilized.

> the presidential-election year youth vote is ~20%. In non-PE years, it, of course, falls

That doesn't seem to be the case, as best I can tell. This is site shows Presidential election years with a ~40% turnout, and mid-terms at about half that: http://www.electproject.org/home/voter-turnout/demographics

Interestingly, the seasonality of the 18-29 voters is much greater than that of other age groups - half as many show up for mid-terms. Compare that to the 60+ age group, where ~70% vote on PE years and ~55-70% vote during midterms.

1) I'm just a messenger relaying what I heard the man say. But let me clarify, "of the total vote."

2) I hate you for making me have to track down and listen to the clip again.[1] (j/k)

3a) On the “Turnout Rates: Age” graph, the 18-29 demo consistently has the lowest turnout of all groups for each year measured.

3b) I count 8 cycles > 20% and 8 <= 20%. No other group is has similarly low numbers.

4) From the link you provided: "Pollsters have long noted that poll respondents overstate their voting participation."

Please let me know if I’m misunderstanding something here.

[1]https://youtu.be/AxuwazaXOMg

As usual, I see downvoting w/o explanations or counterarguments. Not sure how that helps promote dialogue or understanding, but 'Okay, thanks for playing(?)"

> It's not obvious to me that higher voter turnout leads to better governance.

Higher than what?

Anyway, I think you’re projecting a lot of rationality where there’s just apathy.

In any case, low voter turnout tends to harm the democrats, as demonstrated by the ludicrous variety of ways various state republican parties have made voting difficult for working people, poor people, non-english speakers, felons, etc etc.

A few authoritarian regimes have been known have high voter turnout. Russia recently had 67% turnout, Cuba 90%, Turkey had 85% though turkey is compulsory. So, turnout is kind of an independent index.

Also, statistically speaking, if the turnout is “representative” then high or low makes no difference with regard to what would occur with full turnout.

When people say we want high turnout, I think they really mean I want my side to have full turnout and the opposition very low turnout —as this is the only situation where this quest makes sense.

Yes, turnout by itself is not a good index. But that seems like a strawman.

I don’t know about the others but in Russia, most employers will make you go and vote. Sometimes for a small reward, go vote for the “preferred” candidate and get $100. Which is significant for someone living off a median wage.

-

Give out free IDs, streamline the ID process, and I won't care about ID requirements. Where I live, while there are DMVs in the city, the only DMVs that provide IDs and licenses are in the suburbs, many of which close at 4:30 PM. Requiring a person to pay for an ID and hope to qualify for a reimbursement later is just two steps removed from a poll tax.

Yes of course I want felons to vote (especially if they've served their sentence), and non-english speakers as well. A citizen is a citizen.

I know many non-English speaking or limited English speaking citizens. Why wouldn't you want them voting?

Side comment: We had a situation here where there was a candidate for a judge, whose name was Uno. (He was ethnically Japanese.) Well, in one of the counties where his name was on the ballot, Hispanics were more than 5% of the population. The election rules required that, for such counties, the ballot instructions be written in Spanish as well as in English. For the judgeship in question, voters were to vote for only one candidate. The translation of that instruction into Spanish was "Vota para uno"!

Note well: I am not saying that citizens who don't speak English shouldn't vote.

Let's flip a coin: heads I win, tails you lose.

If you decide not to play, are you being more rational or more apathetic?

> Anyway, I think you’re projecting a lot of rationality where there’s just apathy.

Calling it "just apathy" is unjustifiable maligning. How is it not completely rational to be apathetic to whether business interests A or business interests B win their contest? What you're doing is the equivalent of a sports fanatic insisting that someone pick a team to root for.

Give these "apathetic" people an actual choice (like say a pitchfork) and you'll see how they really feel. In fact, I'd posit that a primary mechanism by which elections are won is convincing people that "this time will be different".

I’m not sure what exactly you disagree with or why you would consider “just” to be a maligning term. I agree with your points.

"Apathy" is generally seen as a negative condition that can be cured, while the "just" distances itself from rationality which is generally seen as a positive quality.

I'm sure there's a lot of non-rational peer-group following behavior that causes people to not vote, but likewise with the people who do vote. So associating the lack of prevailing rationality to a specific choice is fallacious.

This boils down to an argument that none of the issues that divide the parties matter to you. Apparently you don't care about immigration, feminism, LGBT issues, inequality and so on? Trump is boring?

American politics in 2018 is not lacking in drama or stark divisions. If today's politics doesn't excite you, what could possibly do it?

Well, under our two party system you end up with two shopping carts full of positions, and you've got to buy one of them. Now neither shopping cart typically lines up perfectly with a hypothetical voter, but what do you do if both baskets contain things that you feel deeply about and oppose?

For instance where should a voter who cares deeply about abortion and capital punishment to go? The Democrats are not simply pro-choice, they demean and belittle his pro-life position. The Republicans find it inconceivable that he doesn't want to execute people guilty of the most heinous crimes, and he's dismissed as an unserious bleeding-heart. So maybe it's not that he's unexcited by the issues, but rather because of his strong inclinations he has no one to vote for.

It might be that low turnout is evidence that the current 'baskets' of the two parties are poorly aligned with the current electorate.

Alternatively, these issues are chosen for prominence specifically because they're divisive.

Note how none of the issues you've listed actually threaten status quo economic interests.

(You might think immigration does, in that tightening it up would increase competition for labor. But the issue would be backstopped from harm to actual people long before the economics would be affected)

This seems rather reductive. Threatening economic interests isn't the only goal that matters. There are other issues that also matter quite a bit.

Voting isn't like going to the shopping mall to buy something for yourself. It's something you do because politics also affects other people.

To the business interests that sponsor the elections and the general news cycle, it certainly is the goal! What a better way to assure your victory than to make sure people are busy fighting about things that don't affect you?

> Voting isn't like going to the shopping mall to buy something for yourself. It's something you do because politics also affects other people.

You're saying this like the philosophy of acting for a greater good isn't already reflected in my position, and so supports your argument Yet, regarding the issues you've listed, half the people voting are doing it because it negatively affects others? That's clearly nonsensical!

What I'm trying to get across is to ask yourself why these particular issues are so pressing and prominent. Not for yourself (I assume you've already done this). Not for the "others" (although you should do this). But constructively, in the larger scale.

If you have someone to defend, it doesn't really matter who made it an issue. Whatever new tactic is being tried, you still have to play defense. Not defending means losing.

Understanding the larger forces in play might be intellectually interesting, but if it results in apathy and forgetting to play defense it's just another way to lose.

Maybe voting isn't going to make things a whole lot better, but remember that it could always be worse.

"Defense" is the age-old refrain of the attacker.

And from a neutral point of view, both teams are doing a lot of attacking - while also seeing themselves as being under attack. Given the circularity, taking a step back and analyzing the larger picture intellectually is the only way to possibly win!

It's funny how we could see the sensationalism of the news cycle as it ramped up in traditional channels, but now that much of our media is our own social echo chamber, it's less perceptible.

The divisions are both extreme and bad. I don't want Nationalist isolationism anymore than I want unrelenting psudeo-socalist globalists who are Both clearly in the pocket of big business. No, the issues of social identity are not the real issues facing our country in my humble opinion.

I could even argue that lower turnout leads to better governance.

If you don't care enough to pay attention, if you don't care enough to investigate the candidates, then I'd prefer that you also don't care enough to go vote. If you do go vote, you (you the hypothetical uninformed voter, not you, my reader) are going to vote for the candidate that had the most ads. I don't want elections being decided by voters who are making decisions that way.

Thank you for saying that.

I have only managed to vote twice in my life, in part because I don't want to pick a name at random and have been rather overwhelmed by events, yet I have had people give me a hard time about that, like it's my fault if bad candidates got elected because I didn't bother to pick a name at random.

And it always infuriates me to be told that I should vote anyway, even if it is random name picking.

We used to have a limit in place where each representative in Congress had no more than 40,000 constituents. This allowed a single individual to have a meaningful influence if they wanted to and kept people engaged. Now elections are so large that there's almost nothing you can do as an individual to make a substantial difference without having vast sums of money.

I also agree that a much larger congress would be a better thing. Returning to less large rep districts would be more representative. Granted, the House would become geometrically more chaotic (handshaking problem), but I think a better system would emerge.

That said, I don't think you are correct, at all, when you say that money is the only thing that matters. Votes matter. For example: The Nov 2012 Los Angeles elections. I voted in those elections. Mayor Garcetti won the election with only 5.4% of the city voting for him [0]. That means that I voted for ~20 Los Angelenos with my single ballot. Basically, I voted for half my homeroom in High School. You cannot buy votes nor stuff ballot boxes at the exchange rate I was able to affect with my single vote. And this was a presidential election, where turnout is typically higher. For the majority of local elections, I was voting for nearly my entire graduating class!

Another good example was Eric Cantor's primary election in 2014 [1]. Despite being the House Majority Leader, and despite outspending his opponent not just 2 to 1, not just 10 to 1, but 40 to 1, Cantor LOST. And it wasn't close, he lost 45% to 55%, a 10 point difference. Cantor resigned as Majority Leader on July 31st.

Money does not count.

Your. Vote. Counts.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_mayoral_election,_...

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_House_of_Represe...

I didn't make it clear what I meant about money. The issue now is that each district is so large that in order to have an influence beyond your own vote you need a lot of money. You can't just talk to people in your community and have a noticeable impact on the outcome. If this were the case, the public would have a lot more influence over government. As it currently stands, one form of mass manipulation or another greatly outweighs what individual activism can achieve.

> We used to have a limit in place where each representative in Congress had no more than 40,000 constituents.

Even if you erased state boundaries (if you don't, the actual number goes up a bit), that would lead to a minimum of 8,143 members in the House.

You'd, IMO, actually do more to improve quality of representation and less to make the House unwieldy if you kept the current number of districts and made each district a 5-member constituency with STV or a similar candidate-centered proportional method of election.

It's at the point now where it's irrational to pay attention / partake in national politics at all unless you have said money. For most individuals it makes sense to treat national politics as basically the weather, and instead just invest in local politics.

But that's not what partisans do by and large outside a few key ones, because in the end for most partisans it's not about policy proposals or trying to steer the gov't, it's about identity.

The problem isn't necessarily low voter turnout overall, but the differences across groups. For example (these numbers are off the top of my head, but in the right ballpark) when middle class people vote at a 70% rate and the working poor vote at 40%, you don't get representation that reflects the communities it represents, regardless of candidate quality.

Neither the cost of voter time, as you referenced, nor its value is the same across groups.

You'll find that efforts to increase voter turnout are emphasized in those communities where turnout is low.

Apathy may be a huge part of it, but that doesn't negate the very real policies that are put in place to prevent people from voting:

- Extremely long poll lines, especially in underserved areas or those mostly populated by racial/ethnic minorities.

- Making people vote on a work day without federal holiday means that it's a financial obstacle, and employment risk. Again, this mostly hits the poor and underserved.

- No paper trail, and extremely hackable voter machines, not enough movement to fix them. [1]

- Voting Rights Act rollback: it was almost impossible to vote if you were Black in racist-run parts of the south (really, look at this [6]), and the protection against this got rolled back in 2013. There's been a bunch of voting law changes since [8].

- ID requirements that have been researched thoroughly and demonstrated to do almost nothing to reduce fraud but virtually always lower turnout, usually to minority populations. [7]

Aside from the topic of voter turnout itself, there are many other ways the democratic ideal is attacked by policy, such as gerrymandering[2], or the fact that we often refer to political parties as "half the country" when in reality only ~26% of the electorate voted for the current president[3], it was a single-digit percentage that voted for each of the eventual candidates in the primaries[4], and even "the electorate" is a lot smaller than our adult working population because felons aren't allowed to vote and we imprison more adults (mostly from poor and underserved populations) than any other industrialized nation. [5]

All this to say, yes, there's a lot of understandable apathy in our system, and we shouldn't judge their lack of desire to vote as some kind of moral failing. But there are many people who would love to participate in a democratic process but there are many concrete (and solvable) factors (with evidence and history beyond "an assumption") preventing participation, and the end result almost always favors a small group of people who don't represent the general population and already have a lot of power.

   [1]: https://www.deconstructconf.com/2018/elle-vargas-primary-directive-on-elections-interference
   [2]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/03/01/this-is-the-best-explanation-of-gerrymandering-you-will-ever-see/?utm_term=.58b2297c703c
   [3]: https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/11/politics/popular-vote-turnout-2016/index.html
   [4]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/08/01/us/elections/nine-percent-of-america-selected-trump-and-clinton.html
   [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate
   [6]: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2013/06/28/voting_rights_and_the_supreme_court_the_impossible_literacy_test_louisiana.html
   [7]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/02/04/new-evidence-that-voter-id-laws-skew-democracy-in-favor-of-white-republicans/?utm_term=.5ddefa4ccf27
   [8]: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/welcome-to-the-first-presidential-election-since-voting-rights-act-gutted-179737/

*"...not obvious to me that higher voter turnout leads to better governance."

That's the thesis of the book Democracy for Realists. http://a.co/d/hg6wfUy

TL;DR: People vote based on identity.

It's a painful, illuminating read.

--

The only consistent way to boost turnout is competitive races. While I'm for universal, automatic voter registration (mostly for election integrity reasons), I acknowledge that it's just nibbling around the edges.

Big, sustainable increases in participation would come from switching to approval voting (or proportional representation, as appropriate) coupled with fair redistricting. Pretty much any measure to improve competitiveness will boost turnout.

> It's not obvious to me that higher voter turnout leads to better governance.

And that has never been the intent. High voter turnout leads to Democratic victories and rain on the election day leads to Republican ones.

If someone is building an app to create technology to make it rain on the election day for whatever reason, you can probably guess the real reason behind it.