Some countries make voting compulsory. Nonvoters in Australia can be fined up to $50;
Italian nonvoters have their names posted on communal bulletin boards (Fiorina and
Peterson 1998, 181).
Many other wealthy industrial countries have multi-party systems based on some form of
proportional representation. This probably contributes to higher turnout, because every
vote for a party that achieves at least a threshold percentage (often as low as 5%) of
votes cast helps increase the number of seats given the party in parliament (the number of
seats each party receives is proportional to the percentage of votes they received in the
election).
This decline in voting comes despite the abolition of racial barriers to voting (passage
of the Federal Voting Rights Act in 1965 was a landmark event).
The social divide between voters and nonvoters. Differences in age, income, race, and
education separate voters from nonvoters.
Age: Older people (45+, 63.6%) vote more than the youngest (18-24, 38.4%).
Income: 72% of those making $50,000+ voted, while turnout among lower income groups
ranged from 24.9% to 48.2%.
Race: Whites (57.2%) vote more than Blacks (47.6%) and Hispanics (22.5%).
Education: About three-quarters of those with college degrees vote, while only about
half those with high school diploma and one-third of those lacking a high school diploma
do.
See Table 5.2, text p111. Table 5.1 gives selected cross-tabulations.
The most dramatic decline is among America's "new" working class -- people who
work in nonprofessional service occupations -- retail trades, secretaries, waiters and
waitresses.
Yet these contrasts aren't the whole story. Since 1960, almost all varieties of
Americans, including highly educated and wealthy whites, vote less.
What explains nonvoting?
Registration as a barrier?
The American system of personal registration places the onus of registering to vote on
the individual voter. With each move, or in the event one does not vote in a Presidential
election, one must re-register.
In most other countries, national governments provide for universal registration,
virtually guaranteeing that all citizens are eligible to vote.
Since over three-quarters of those actually registered to vote in the United States
actually do, making registration a governmental responsibility would boost turnout. Yet
this approach is likely to produce limited results. These limitations can be seen in the
results of the 1992 "Motor Voter" Bill, which helped increase registration by
mandating that registration forms and voter assistance be available in motor vehicle and
other government offices and that mail-in registration be allowed in all states. As the
chart shows, between 1992 and 1996 voter registration increased from 70.6% to 74.4%,
however the percentage of those registered who actually voted declined sharply,
from 78% to 66%.
Increased registration thus does not translate into higher turnout. Moreover, even
automatic registration, combined with other measures to make voting itself easier (e.g.,
Sunday voting) would, according to most analysts, only boost turnout by 5-10 percent.
