Reference no: EM133569670

Assignment:

Why is turnout so low in U.S. elections? We make it more difficult to vote than other democracies, by Eric Black, MinnPost, October 1, 2014.

Please include an Introduction & Conclusion

Early in Eric Black's article he writes, "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." This is an almost shocking statement for many Americans to grapple with. How can it be that the world's oldest democracy has such abysmal turnout at the polls? When examining this data, one tendency is to explore what is wrong with American voters. Are they lazy, uniformed, apathetic? Eric Black takes a different approach; he focuses on institutional arrangements rather than on individual failings. Black describes just some of the many ways that the US electoral system is structured and how those structures can hamper voter turnout.

Interestingly, many reforms to increase voter turnout described by Black were implemented during the 2020 election to accommodate the social distancing necessities of the COVID-19 pandemic. For example, most states allowed all (or nearly all) voters to vote by mail, and/or allowed voters to cast ballots in special drop boxes for days or weeks before the Tuesday of the election; these changes mostly eliminated the US practice of only allowing one day, which sits in the middle of the workweek, for people to vote. Revealingly, the 2020 election saw the highest voter turnout rate in 120 years! This gives credence to Black's argument that reducing voting barriers would result in more people casting ballots. Further, despite the changes associated with an increase in voter turnout for the 2020 election, courts, election officials, and the Justice Department found no evidence of increases in voter fraud; this indicates that voter turnout rates can be increased without sacrificing electoral integrity.

In a 5-minute audio or video ("podcast"), answer the following questions:

1. What are the four specific ways that Black argues the structure of US elections drives down voter turnout?
2. In what ways does Black argue that voter registration requirements reduce voter turnout?
3. What are other institutional arrangements that might lower voter turnout that Black does not discuss in his article?
4. What specific institutional changes do you think should be made to increase US voter turnout?