Saturday, November 23, 2019
How to Increase Voter Turnout
As we learned in class, voter turnout is not good. People feel alienated from the process, and thus do not vote. What should the US government do to fix this problem? According to the center of American progress, we need to streamline voting registration with "automatic voter registration, same-day voter registration (SDR),11 preregistration of 16- and 17-year-olds, and online voter registration." They also believe in strengthening civics courses in high school, like the ones mandatory at our school and the rest of the schools in the state. Additionally, they say that increasing the accessibility of voting will help greatly along with restoring the voting rights of incarcerated people. I know the latter is a controversial topic but nonetheless might give some people the feeling that they are still part of the government process. The Stanford Social Innovation review believes that we need a combination of these things in order to improve the state of voting in our country, that there is not just one easy fix. They also say that the representativeness of voters should be improved through increasing the awareness of policies that candidates support. They say that there is an extreme lack of representation of all groups, as it is predominately white upper-class people over the age of 65 who are voting. What position do you hold on how the US government should increase voter turnout? Do you believe that a significant amount of money should be used in order to stimulate voter turnout? Even with these changes, do you think that there will be a significant enough amount of change for it to be worthwhile? What other possibilities are there to increase voter turnout?
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I think that making voting booths and places more accessible should be a priority. We saw in the documentary that a lot of people do not vote because they would have to travel far to do so. Also, I think that the election day itself should be changed to over the weekend, as many people who are busy working during the week simply do not have the time to come out. I feel that making these adjustments would make a significant and long-term impact. It will also convey that to people that their opinion matters and they should contribute.
ReplyDeleteI think that one way we can successfully increase voter turnout is to focus our resources on the youth electorate. There are an energized bunch of future voters who need to learn the importance of being civically engaged. I think that with the right education, we can mold these teenage brains into responsible future voters. Organizations like Vote16 and the Civics Center try to increase voter turnout specifically in the youth electorate by hosting voter registration drives and campaigning to lower the voting age in local level elections. I think if more public schools adopted these practices of educating their students on the importance of voting, we will see a huge increase in the number of voters who turn out to the polls.
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