Electoral Voting
Electoral Voting
From the time in memorial, the United States of America has been conducting a general election to elect it a leader. In the United States of America, voting is a democratic right for every registered citizen to express their opinion on the right candidate to rule. In America, the commonly used method in the election is first past the post system popularly known as single-member popularity voting. In this system, the electorate cast a vote for their preferred candidate, and whoever receives the highest number of votes wins. However, the decision to vote is rational, and voters’ turnout may be influenced by various techniques, as discussed.
The process of voting attracts opportunity costs. It takes voter valuable time and effort that could be used to do other economically essential things such as going to work for pay, volunteering activities, or playing. Moreover, gathering information, deliberating, or digesting about political information takes an individual valuable time, which could be used elsewhere for self-development. Rational people, as most economics suggest, will attend duties or activities if so, doing will result in maximization of utility (Shannon, McGee, & Jones,2019). However, voting exercise does not appear to maximize expected utility to the majority of the voter. This has brought about the paradox of voting.
However, the analogy of whether voting is rational or not squarely depends on the voter choice by casting a vote in the ballot box. It can only be rational when the voter cast vote with an objecting to influence the outcome of the election (Shannon, McGee, & Jones,2019). In contrast, voting becomes irrational if the voter cast vote as a way of expressing themselves and their loyalty to a certain movement or group.
For a long period, time United Stated has one of the lowest voters turn out in the world. The united state government has tried many techniques to increase voter turnout. Change of the voter registration policy has been put in place to ease registration. Moreover, other modern medium platforms such as social media and text messages are applied to remind the voter to register. (Shannon, McGee, & Jones,2019). However, the great problem is how to increase voter turn out, especially to the minority such as the people of color, those with disabilities, poor Americans, and the youth or the first-time voter. These groups of people have a low voice in the democratic process since the majority of them don’t vote. Turning out in large number to vote is an important exerciser for democracy. The higher the turnout, it lessens the gap of those under the presented population. It would also be portly a true picture of the American wishes. Some of the methods to increase the voters’ turn out in America are as follows.
The first is conversing. This is the traditional method to get people to turn out to vote. Canvasser or the volunteers heat the streets, passing the message to the people on the streets, and going door to door talking and spreading the information to the bout the election, (Shannon, McGee, & Jones,2019). This method encourages more people to register and to turn out in large numbers during the election period. Secondly, texting could be used to reach voters. This can be effectively achieved through bulk messages so that to reach many voters as possible. The messages could be created in a way to create a sense of agency and a reminder to the voter to register and to turn out in large number the day of casting a vote and exercise their democratic right. The other method that could be used to increase the voter turnout is online registration. Online registration provides a convenient platform where the United States citizen would easily register the voter at the comfort of their home (Shannon, McGee, & Jones,2019). This serves as a breakthrough, especially to the first-time voter who doesn’t know where to register. Moreover, automatic registration has the effect of increasing voter turnout. This approach can be achieved where, for instance, where the driver is taking the driving license, they are automatically registered to vote. The other possible way to increase voter turn out is same-day registration. This strategy would allow citizens to register on the day of the election. Many citizens who had not to have a chance to register will be attracted by the friend and colleagues going to vote and end up following them.
In the modern-day, more than eighty percent of the people are living in a democratic nation. However, regardless of many citizens have the opportunity to elect their leaders, no all people get that opportunity. Low voter turns out during the election being the major dilemma to many states, including the united states of America this aspect has encouraged politicians to design law and policies to curb this menace, (Birch,2018). However, this has led to the development of social division and problems in the economy. In the united state, more than half of the people that do not vote are low-income earners, people of color, and disabled. Since the act of voting has an opportunity cost, many citizens prefer to engage in viable economic activity other than going to vote (Birch, S. 2018). If America had compulsory voting, there would likely have a large turn out on the minority groups. This would portray a true picture of political consequences.
References
Shannon, B. N., McGee, Z. A., & Jones, B. D. (2019). Bounded Rationality and Cognitive Limits in Political Decision Making. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics. https://oxfordre.com/politics/politics/abstract/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228637.001.0001/acrefore-9780190228637-e-961
McGhee, E., & Krimm, D. (2016). Putting California’s Voter Turnout in Context. The Public Policy Institute of California. https://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/report/R_216EMR.pdf
Birch, S. (2018). Democratic norms, empirical realities, and approaches to improving voter turnout. Res Publica, 24(1), 9-30. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11158-017-9380-3