Voter
turnout for Tuesday’s special election on Proposal 1 was a little higher than
expected, 24.9 percent across Michigan, but still fairly miserable given all the attention the
sales tax plan received and the fact that the subject at hand – roads – is about
as universal as any issue the electorate will ever decide.
those numbers are par for the course, in Michigan and across the U.S.
The Independent
Voters Network reports that a Pew
Research Center survey of 34 developed countries revealed bad news for the
state of democracy in the United States. When compared with the countries in
the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the U.S.
placed 31st in voter turnout, behind Slovenia. Turnout was calculated based on
the estimated voting-age population from the 2012 general election.
Pew found:
“U.S. turnout in 2012 was 53.6%, based on
129.1 million votes cast for president and an estimated voting-age population
of just under 241 million people. Among OECD countries, the highest
turnout rates were in Belgium (87.2%), Turkey (86.4%) and Sweden (82.6%).
Switzerland consistently has the lowest turnout, with just 40% of the
voting-age population casting ballots in the 2011 federal legislative
elections, the most recent.”
A calculation of U.S. voter turnout based
solely on voters who are already registered would disguise the underlying issue
of lagging voter participation, according to IVN. If one were to exclude
non-registered voters, U.S. turnout in 2012 would be 84.3% of registered
voters, but this hides the fact that nearly half of the eligible voting-age
population didn’t participate.
