[EL] This is the highest turnout of voting age citizens in American history

Sat Nov 7 07:39:16 PST 2020

A good question, Jon: "informed voting" could be in the eyes of the
beholder. While I agree with Braden that turnout alone is hardly the only
barometer of democratic health, I would disagree in saying that it's not a
valuable one.

I did want to lift up a state-based fact
<http://www.electproject.org/home/voter-turnout/voter-turnout-data>from
Michael McDonald's invaluable US Elections Project: when all the tallying
is done, there's a good bet that the single highest turnout state  in
voter eligible population in the country this year will be Maine.  It was a
few points behind Minnesota in 2016, but should end up above it this year,
nearing 80% of voter eligible population (80%)

Maine for the first time had ranked choice voting ballots for president and
U.S. Senate along with a big uptick in voting by mail due to the pandemic.
There are those out there that worry RCV may hurt turnout, but we keep
getting evidence like this to the contrary (both in absolute numbers and in
declines of undervotes in down ballot RCV races held at the same time with
more prominent races). While use of RCV didn't affect an outcome this year,
it was a backup to uphold majority rule and played a fascinating role in
the positive relationship between the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate
and a progressive independent that usually would have been toxic.

 I would also suggest RCV is a better alternative to Georgia's
post-November runoff solution to non-maroity outcomes that this year that
will - incredibly in a reflection of what has to be one of the absolute
worst election policies in modern American history --  almost certainly
result in a statewide runoff election on December 1st for a Public Service
Commission seat 4 (with the GOP frontrunner right now sitting at 49.96% of
the vote and a Liertarian having earned over 3%) and then the two separate
U.S. Senate election runoffs on January 5th. For those Georgia
policymakers  thinking that separate statewide runoff in December and
federal runoffs in January was a good idea, let's see what turnout it gets
compared to its VEP turnout this week of 68% (up from 59% in 2016).

Rob

On Sat, Nov 7, 2020 at 10:12 AM Jon Sherman <
jsherman at fairelectionscenter.org> wrote:

> Can you define “bad voting” or “informed voting”?
>
> On Sat, Nov 7, 2020 at 9:44 AM Braden Boucek <braden at beacontn.org> wrote:
>
>> I appreciate your perspective. I do, however, respectfully disagree that
>> turnout alone is a laudable metric or even useful. 90% turnout doesn't mean
>> that good policy will result or vice versa. Oftentimes the electorate takes
>> a look at the two candidates on offer and exercises a reasonable choice to
>> not vote for either (or cast a gesture vote for a third party).  That is a
>> valid choice that *itself* sends an important political message to the
>> political parties--not interested, do better. Conversely, widespread
>> political ignorance is already a problem and bad voting can be worse than
>> no voting, as Professor Illya Somin has capably argued here
>> <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/10/03/the-ongoing-debate-over-mandatory-voting/>
>> and here
>> <http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Political-Ignorance-Smaller-Government/dp/0804786615>.
>> The ideal should be informed voting, something that turnout does not
>> measure.
>> I appreciate the chance to dialogue.
>> Braden H. Boucek
>> __________________
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>>
>> On Sat, Nov 7, 2020 at 8:26 AM Rob Richie <rr at fairvote.org> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> I keep seeing references to our turnout being the highest "in the modern
>>> era", as in Farhad Manjoo's valuable New York Times lead commentary today,
>>> or since some specific election before the 19th amendment a century ago
>>> extended suffrage rights to voting-age women.
>>>
>>> In comparisons across countries, like this useful one at the Institute
>>> for Democracy and Electoral Assistance
>>> <https://www.idea.int/data-tools/data/voter-turnout>, the most basic
>>> measure of degree of relative democratization is the percentage of the
>>> voting age population that casts ballots. To be sure, one can also measure
>>> turnout by looking at percentages of the vote of the population allowed by
>>> a nation to vote, but prioritizing that measure can mean ignoring
>>> undemocratic practices like disenfranchising women and racial and ethnic
>>> minorities.
>>>
>>> So... two cheers for the US having its highest turnout ever among our
>>> voting-age population, which is about 62% according to  the United
>>> States Election Project <http://www.electproject.org/2020g>and
>>> approaching 67% of  citizens of voting age citizens who are eligible to
>>> vote (with the difference largely due noncitizen residents and
>>> disenfranchised citizens with felony convictions, with citizens and
>>> residents in American territories like Puerto Rico not part of the
>>> denominator.)
>>> .
>>> Being a democratic idealist, I'll reserve three cheers for when we can
>>> approach Malta, which has had only one election with less than 90%
>>> turnout <https://www.idea.int/data-tools/world-view/40?st=all#rep>of
>>> its voting age population in the past 25 years --and regularly has the
>>> highest turnout among democracies without compulsory voting and uses the
>>> ranked choice voting form of proportional representation (the
>>> candidate-based "single transferable vote") contributing to a highly
>>> competitive electoral culture.
>>>
>>> Rob
>>>
>>> --
>>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>>> Rob Richie
>>> President and CEO, FairVote
>>> 6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 240
>>> <https://www.google.com/maps/search/6930+Carroll+Avenue,+Suite+240+Takoma+Park,+MD+20912?entry=gmail&source=g>
>>> Takoma Park, MD 20912
>>> <https://www.google.com/maps/search/6930+Carroll+Avenue,+Suite+240+Takoma+Park,+MD+20912?entry=gmail&source=g>
>>> rr at fairvote.org  (301) 270-4616  http://www.fairvote.org
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>>> Twitter <https://twitter.com/fairvote>*   My Twitter
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>>>
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> --
> Jon Sherman
> Senior Counsel
> Fair Elections Center
> 1825 K Street NW, Suite 450
> Washington, D.C. 20006
> Phone: (202) 248-5346
> jsherman at fairelectionscenter.org
> www.fairelectionscenter.org
>

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rob Richie
President and CEO, FairVote
6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 240
Takoma Park, MD 20912
rr at fairvote.org  (301) 270-4616  http://www.fairvote.org
*FairVote Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/FairVoteReform>*   *FairVote
Twitter <https://twitter.com/fairvote>*   My Twitter
<https://twitter.com/rob_richie>

Thank you for considering a *donation
<http://www.fairvote.org/donate>. Enjoy our video on ranked choice voting
<https://youtu.be/CIz_nzP-W_c>!*
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