This past Election Day, all three statewide incumbents were easily re-elected, the Assembly\u2019s Democratic majority got bigger, but consistent with the overall Republican political tsunami seen across the nation, the Republicans took back control of the state Senate and picked up some New York Congressional seats.<\/p>\n
Yet, in one significant way, the election in New York was worse than ever in the state\u2019s modern political history:\u00a0 voter turnout was at a historic low.<\/span><\/p>\n As measured as the percent of eligible voters that went to the polls, only 30 percent of New Yorkers voted in the gubernatorial election.\u00a0 A review of data provided by the U.S. Elections Project shows that that percentage is the lowest since 1980 \u2013 the first year that the Project started tracking.<\/span><\/p>\n And what makes it worse is that New York ranked 43<\/span>rd<\/sup> in the nation in turnout!<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s right, 43<\/span>rd<\/sup>, ahead of <\/span>only<\/em> Indiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah.\u00a0 But behind the rest of the nation, including states like Alabama and Louisiana.<\/span><\/p>\n Maine, Minnesota and Wisconsin were the only states with voter turnouts that exceeded 50 percent.<\/span><\/p>\n The reasons for this low turnout?\u00a0 When looking across the nation, some states, like New York, lacked competitive gubernatorial races to draw voters to the polls; others had cut polling hours or reduced early voting periods. And, in some states, new voter ID laws could have kept some voters away. \u00a0Also, the toxic nature of partisan politics in America alienates non-ideological voters \u2013 but fires up each political party\u2019s base.<\/span><\/p>\n While there is not a lot that can be done to ameliorate the toxic nature of American politics, structural barriers can be overcome.\u00a0 And those structural barriers need to be tackled.\u00a0 There is no other developed democracy in the world that, when it holds an election in which all of the seats in the lower house of the national legislature are on the ballot, has a turnout of less than half of its eligible voters. In the United States, it happens every midterm election.\u00a0 In fact, this past election, <\/span>two-thirds of the nation\u2019s voting-age population did not vote.<\/em><\/em> Here are two of the structural reasons why:<\/span><\/p>\n Obstacle #1:\u00a0 Requiring voter registration.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong>The United States” voting system is rare among world democracies in that it requires voters to register to vote. \u00a0In most of the rest of the democratic world, there\u2019s no separate step called registration. It happens automatically. Thus, registering citizens to vote is the responsibility of the government. \u00a0The voter just has to show up.<\/span><\/p>\n In the United States, the responsibility is on the citizen to get registered.<\/span><\/p>\n While many U.S. jurisdictions are making it easier to, for example, register to vote while getting a driver\u2019s license or even offering “same-day registration” (which Minnesota permits) many Americans don\u2019t live in these places.<\/span><\/p>\n In New York State, voters are typically required to register 25 days before an election \u2013 well before most voters tune into the election debates.<\/span><\/p>\n Obstacle #2:\u00a0 Holding elections on Tuesday.<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong>No other nation does that. \u00a0Most democracies vote on weekends, or have more than one day to vote, or get a day off work to vote. But in America: Tuesday.<\/span><\/p>\n The state of Minnesota, which has the model law on most of these issues, guarantees every citizen time off from their jobs to vote without penalties or reductions in their pay, personal leave or vacation time.\u00a0 Minnesota also has switched to an increasingly common system called “no excuses” absentee voting, where those who want the convenience of voting in advance by mail don\u2019t have to lie and pretend that there was no reasonable way they could get to the polls on the one Tuesday designated as Election Day.<\/span><\/p>\n Many jurisdictions are making it easier to, for example, vote by mail. Oregon switched in 2000 to a system of exclusively voting by mail. \u00a0It had a voter-participation rate of about 80 percent that year.<\/span><\/p>\n During his campaign for re-election, Governor Cuomo pledged to repair New York\u2019s weak voter registration and election administration laws.\u00a0 He should model his reforms on the best elections practices found in the nation \u2013 and the world.<\/span><\/p>\n Here\u2019s hoping that his efforts succeed.<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s all for now.\u00a0 I\u2019ll be keeping an eye on the Capitol and will talk to you again next week.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This past Election Day, all three statewide incumbents were easily re-elected, the Assembly\u2019s Democratic majority got bigger, but consistent with the overall Republican political tsunami seen across the nation, the Republicans took back control of the state Senate and picked up some New York Congressional seats. Yet, in one significant way, the election in New […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1184"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1456,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1184\/revisions\/1456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}