8/13/2019 Status Quo Problems
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Status quo Problems
American voter turnout needs a solution as current methods have
not alleviated its decline.
Jonathan Levine is a lecturer of American Studies and English at
Tsinghua University in Beijing,November 2, 2012 , "The Case for
Compulsory Voting,"
http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/the-case-compulsory-voting-7691
(accessed 8/15/13)
The last time Americans went to the polls to pick a president,
Barack Obama handily defeated hisRepublican challenger, John
McCain, by a 53 to 46 percent vote margin. The presidents
unambiguous
victory, however, was marred by a troubling statistic: 43
percent of the American voting population about ninety-seven
million people decided to stay home, a trend that has been more or
lessconsistent since 1970. Turnout at midterm elections is even
more unsettling. For more than fiftyyears, no midterm contest has
ever garnered a majority of the voting-age American public. Given
thenumbers, its nothing short of miraculous that there has not been
a widespread loss of legitimacy amongour elected officials. With
the 2012 election only weeks away, and the candidates bases
largely
underwhelmed, America seems on track to continue down the path
of electoral apathy.
But what can we do? say the pundits. This is America. Dont we
have a right to stay home if wechoose? How can it be right for the
government to force you into an activity as prosaic as voting?
Theseand other well-worn criticisms have more or less settled the
debate and snuffed out any serious publicdiscussion about the
consequences of mass electoral disengagement. The counterarguments,
however,are not so Orwellian. True election reform would create a
more representative and democratic system.
Reduced Turnout erodes the legitimacy of government, which could
be dangerous for the U.S.
Sofie Marien , senior member of the PARTIREP project and a
postdoctoral researcher of the ResearchFoundation Flanders (FWO) at
the University of Leuven, October 2007, "Is Compulsory Voting a
GoodIdea? The Consequences of Compulsory Voting in Belgium,"
Participation and Representation(PARTIREP), pp. 1-12 ,
http://www.partirep.eu/sites/default/files/working_paper/document/1273756118.pdf
(accessed8/15/13)
A turnout rate of 53 per cent is not exceptional in American
politics ( Federal Election Commission
2005). For all the parliamentary elections from 1945 till 2001
the average turnout rate in the UnitedStates amounted to 47.7 per
cent of the voting age population. As a consequence the
InternationalInstitute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance
(Pintor and Gratschew 2002) ranked the UnitedStates at the 138th
place of 169 countries with regard to turnout. The problem may
worsen becausevoter participation is declining in most liberal
democracies (Franklin 2004). The fact that more andmore citizens
decide not to vote can now be considered as a serious problem for
the health ofAmerican democracy (Verba, Schlozman and Brady 1995;
Franklin 1999), since low turnout erodes the
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