Perrin why you voted

That's what a public is and you need that ritual process to make people feel like they're part of the public because there's no other way to have that work out.

So a public is a collectivity, not just a collection, constituted by a common interest, a technology, or an idea. And citizenship is about participating in publics. That is, about being a public person, which in turn constitutes and shapes those publics.

Here are a couple of pieces of data to think about here. These are graphs of voter turnout rates over the last half century or so, there's to The left hand one is for presidential elections, the right hand one is for off year elections.

As you can see, these are not changing all the much. Although, there is a significant uptick around the Obama election in The blue lines are the proportion of the eligible population who actually voted. The red lines are the proportion of people who said they voted when they were asked by the American National Election Study, which is a very well respected survey of voter participation.

So I'm sure some of you are surprised that the rate actually hasn't declined all that much over that time period. We talk a lot about voter participation being a crisis. It's honestly not really much of a crisis. So you may be surprised to see that it hasn't gone down all the much once we account for the increasing number of ineligible voting age people in the United States, and that's probably a minor piece of good news. Turnout in was the highest since , and that increase actually wiped out all those years of people whining and complaining about decreasing voter turnout.

But I want to actually call your attention to the difference between the red lines and the blue lines. As you can see in this graph, vote over-reporting has bounced around between So somewhere between an eighth and nearly a quarter of the population is in that category. Frankly, this is more perplexing than the fact that people vote in the first place.

We do have a name for this in polling, it's social desirability bias, the tendency to over-report doing things that are socially desirable. People over-report church attendance, they over-report safe sex practices, they under-report illicit drug use and prejudice attitudes as some other examples. All right, the question then is this - why is voting socially desirable?

Why over-report it at all? Why go through the trouble of lying to a survey taker when you didn't go through the trouble of actually voting? Because if there's anything with less benefit to your outcome than voting, it's lying about voting. So, of course I'm delighted that people think it's embarrassing, they're embarrassed enough to want to lie to the survey taker, but why not just vote to begin with?

Now, most people who don't vote say it's because they forget or they don't have time, but I think it's actually a more interesting issue than that. And to talk about that, I want to turn to how we think about public opinion, polling, and the effects of polling on the public.

And, for this, let me go back to that critical modern social theory class. Let me start with a kind of elaborate metaphor. When Adorno was writing about the advent of the long playing record, which at the time was a high technology way of listening to opera, Adorno worried that the advent of the long playing record would make it possible for people to listen to opera, particularly housewives, to listen to opera while they were doing the dishes and they wouldn't pay it either the necessary attention to truly understand and appreciate it, nor would be part of the right cultural ritual to allow the music to be as its authentic self was.

In a different text, he also identifies the distinction between the liberal and the democratic technologies. The democratic technologies are those like the radio, that create a public bi-common address, that is they create a demos. Where as the telephone is a liberal technology, and again in his time, it individualizes, right? It prevents that kind of public creation. Now, of course, last week I was mowing the lawn at my house, I had my iPod playing, and we switched from Public Enemy to Rihanna to Beethoven's Ninth just like this, which would have made Adorno turn over in his grave, but it's also a way in which the technologies of listening have changed, right?

Just as radio and the long playing record and eventually the iPod actually changed music itself by changing the rules of listening. I want to argue that the representative public opinion poll changed the rules of opining, and thereby changed opinions themselves. So imagine a world without public opinion polling. This is Adorno, this world without the long playing record, right? Without polling, having an opinion, opining that is, means deciding an issue is important, finding an audience to broadcast that opinion to, and actively expressing a view.

It's difficult, its time-consuming, but it's potentially very rewarding, right? Doing it is a rare experience and a privileged experience, but a meaningful experience. However, with polling Let me try that again. However, with polling, the pollster decides what issues are important and delivers that audience ready-made, right? Expressing a view means making a selection among predetermined choices. This is another of these cases where what I want to suggest is that there are no easy answers.

Polling does democratize opinion. It gives many more people the opportunity to participate and to have an opinion, but it also changes those opinions.

So I don't think it's just a generational difference that leads me to say that listening to Rihanna or Lady Gaga on my iPod while jogging or mowing the lawn takes virtually no cognitive effort whatsoever. And it transforms listening, therefore, into an entirely passive activity, albeit a fun, an enjoyable activity.

And I like Rihanna and Lady Gaga. This listening technique, in turn, encourages Rihanna and Lady Gaga to make music that suits that same low attention listening, right? The uniformity and the length of the track, the style of music, right, it works because it's made for that technology. Likewise, answering a public opinion poll takes little cognitive effort.

It transforms opining into an entirely passive activity. It also encourages pollsters, the media, and politicians to produce politics that suits low attention citizenship. In place of an active, imaginative, expressive citizen, we become choice-making citizens whose principal task is selecting among the preordained options presented. Of course, this pattern is far from monolithic and many citizens crave and actively look for ways to express and discuss ideas and views within publics, and many of these publics are technologically mediated through television, talk radio, social media, and so on.

And many of these spaces are so intensely partisan that they're really very inspiring and emotionally charged, even as they offer relatively little opportunity for engagement with disagreement. So sort of good and bad pieces of this. But the main thing that I want to say is polling has taught us particular ways to opine. And let me talk about another technology that is very similar to this. This insight, that polls don't just measure public opinion, but work to shape it, is an important case of that general principal, that people learn how to behave from the techniques and technologies that we use to ascertain that behavior.

So another important case that I want to mention just briefly is the increasingly popular role of fact checking in politics.

And, of course, Brendan Niehaus, another Swarthmore alum, is one of the great scholars and proponents of fact checking. He's done tremendously good research on it. There is certainly no shortage of truth stretching and outright lying going on in the campaigns, so I grudgingly acknowledge the relevance of simply asking whether each candidate is speaking accurately at all, but I think the obsession with fact checking also teaches us something else.

It prevents us from paying attention to the most important questions, which are differences in values, analysis and leadership style that make the decision a legitimately democratic moment. Fact checking has an unintended consequence when it takes over the coverage, the publics fear of talking about the election. Citizens consuming the media don't just learn the answers, they've also learned what questions are worth asking.

The obsession with fact checking teaches citizens that the important thing to pay attention to is truth versus falsehood, not the matters of moral difference and emphasis that should be at the heart of any major political decision. That problem is actually exacerbated by something else, which is the increasing tendency to [inaudible ] social networks by preexisting political preferences.

This is not a new thing, as we talked about in the class earlier today, it's a tendency that's certainly been around since the advent of cable television in the s. The graphics here in A and B, you can find these anywhere. These are force directed network labs of retweet networks for the tweet collections of the election, that's in A, and the Super Bowl, that's in B.

Each note You don't even need to know the particular thing. The main thing that you can see is that when we talk about politics, suddenly we are only talking with one another. The networks are almost completely separated. And when we talk about the Super Bowl, not so much, right? We are interacting with one another much more broadly.

So the other piece of this puzzle is that networks that are almost entirely homogenous with respect to people's political preferences mean that the same dynamics that hope to work in the public don't work in the same way that we think they might.

These are all ways of just reinforcing what Two decades ago, Nicholas Negroponte called The Daily Me, a technologically insulated world that allows us to avoid the mess and discomfort of honest disagreement.

So, on the one hand, most people know someone they disagree with, but on the other hand, once they know they disagree with them, they tend to talk about something else, something other than politics. And the media environment is certainly a major culprit in this process and there's all kinds of good evidence showing this, but it's also the case that there are some interesting new findings, particularly former post-back at Carolina, Gordon [inaudible ], but more educated conservatives have less trust in science now than before because political identity colors how education works, right?

It's a multi-stage identification process. So, what that means to us is a number of, I think, important theoretical challenges for thinking about public opinion polling and the public. First, it's really important to try and get contextual responses. Get people hot cognition so they are angry and emotionally responding to a particular question. Second, we need to recognize that belief clusters and fragmented publics mean that the same thing, the same cultural object, means different things in those different kinds of sub-publics.

Skip that for a second and move on straight to this question. This is one example of thinking about how to think about public opinion polling. This is simply support for same-sex marriage to This is a real anomaly in public opinion research because it's one of the very few times that opinion has changed much more quickly than cohorts.

So that means real people changed their minds as opposed to just the people who disagreed died and new people were born. And you can see, this is not a surprising curve here, we know this is how this process has played out.

What's really important and interesting to take a look at, to me, though, is this yellow line, which is nearly constant from to Moreover, individuals who have moved can simply bring a bill or other documentation showing residency to the designated voting location in order to update their voter registration. In the election, nationwide, more than 1. Same-day voter registration has proven effective in increasing voter participation. Notably, same-day registration is effective at increasing voter registration for historically underrepresented groups.

In , young people from states with SDR policies were, on average, 9 percent more likely to vote than those living in states that lacked the policy. According to estimates, if implemented nationally, SDR could boost participation for young people—ages 18 to 25—by 12 percent as well as by 7.

In addition to increasing participation, the majority of election officials in jurisdictions with SDR have found implementation costs to be minimal, and roughly half of respondents said that it reduced the burden of voter registration surges that occur before traditional registration deadlines.

All else being equal, if projections are based on the 5-percent average increase in voter turnout that was experienced by states with SDR, had all states that do not have SDR passed and implemented the policy, there likely could have been more than 4. Same-day voter registration is a common-sense policy proven to increase voter participation and close participation gaps. States enacting it must be sure that the policy includes Election Day registration, as opposed to only allowing SDR during early voting periods.

To ensure that the policy is carried out effectively, voting locations must be adequately staffed to handle large numbers of same-day registrations, as the policy has proven popular in the states that use it.

One way to improve voter participation for young people is to welcome them into the democratic process early, preregistering them to vote at a time when they are more likely to begin interacting with government agencies where voter registration services are offered.

Preregistration policies allow eligible Americans to preregister to vote before their 18th birthday. Upon turning 18, their voter registration is automatically activated so that they can exercise their right to vote. During the elections, African Americans who preregistered to vote in Florida were 5. Since launching its program in the fall of , the state has already preregistered , and year-olds. In adopting preregistration policies, states should offer preregistration services through not just the DMV, but other sites and services that are frequented and used by young people, such as schools, hair salons, movie theaters, community days of action, volunteer programs geared toward young people, and naturalization ceremonies.

Online voter registration makes the voter registration process more convenient and drives voter participation, particularly for young people. It eliminates the hassle of locating where to register, securing time off work, and finding transportation to DMVs or other voter registration locations in order to register in person. Online voter registration is particularly useful for eligible voters who are highly transient as well as those with inflexible schedules.

Online voter registration is popular in jurisdictions that have it. Research shows that those who register online are more likely to participate in elections. And, as new generations become more accustomed to using web-based services, reliance on online voter registration may increase in the future. In addition to improving participation in elections—particularly for young people—online voter registration has been shown to save jurisdictions money. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 38 states and the District of Columbia currently provide eligible voters with the option to register to vote online.

As of , 11 percent of all Americans still do not use the internet. Most non-internet users are older, lower-income, and live in rural communities. As such, to ensure that they are not shut out of the democratic process, they must be provided opportunities to register through other means.

In addition to implementing those policies mentioned above, states must meet their obligations under the National Voter Registration Act NVRA , which requires DMVs, social service agencies, and other government offices to offer voter registration services to eligible people during transactions. In just its first year of implementation, the NVRA helped facilitate voter registration applications and updates for more than 30 million people.

In , when the NVRA was enacted, only Unfortunately, in some places, compliance with the NVRA is lacking. A Pew survey found that only 16 percent of unregistered respondents were asked to register to vote by an official at a motor vehicle department, social services agency, or other government office. Many eligible voters with young children must find reliable and affordable child care before going to the polls. However, this can be especially difficult if designated polling places are located far away or if polling place lines are long, requiring additional time away from work or home—time that many Americans cannot afford.

Black voters are, on average, forced to wait in line nearly twice as long as white voters. Eligible voters should be provided ample opportunity to exercise their civic duty and have their voice heard in our democracy.

Affirmative voting policies—including in-person early voting, no-excuse absentee voting, and vote-at-home with vote centers—aim to make the voting process more convenient for voters, particularly for those with scheduling and transportation challenges. Some convenience-based voting policies, like vote-at-home, have shown to be more effective in driving participation than others. States should implement the following pro-voter policies in order to expand voting opportunities for eligible Americans and drive participation:.

Early voting aims to make voting more convenient for eligible voters by providing them with greater flexibility and opportunities to cast ballots. If implemented correctly and with sufficient resources, early voting has the potential to facilitate shorter lines on Election Day—particularly among communities of color—and to improve the voter experience.

Although some research suggests that, by simply making the task more convenient, early voting mostly benefits people who would already vote, one study found that early voting can increase participation by about 2 to 4 percent.

It is also worth noting that cuts to early voting can have a detrimental impact on voter participation. A study by The Atlantic found that, in North Carolina counties with polling place closures and reductions in voting hours, during the first week of early voting, black voter participation reached only 60 percent of the cumulative participation at the same point in And while participation increased some in the weeks leading up to the election, black participation never reached more than 90 percent of the cumulative participation in All else being equal, if states that currently do not have early voting had it in place during the elections, one could have expected at least , more voters that year based on conservative 2 percent estimates.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, early voting is permitted in 33 states and the District of Columbia, though early voting opportunities vary in terms of timing and location.

In implementing this policy, states should ensure that there is an adequate number of early voting locations conveniently located near public transportation. Early voting should be available on Saturdays and Sundays and should begin at least 14 days prior to Election Day, as research suggests that early voting is most commonly utilized by infrequent voters and nearer to an election. However, hours of operation vary significantly depending on the jurisdiction.

Limited polling place hours can be problematic for voters whose workdays begin especially early and end late in the evening and for those who are unable to take time away from work. As noted in previous sections of this report, the act of voting can be a burdensome process for many eligible Americans who otherwise want to participate.

It may involve taking time away from work, child care costs, and mobility and transportation challenges as well as long lines and complications at polling places.

No-excuse absentee voting and vote-at-home policies help voters avoid these altogether, allowing eligible voters to cast ballots at their convenience, often in the comfort of their own homes. Absentee voting is the process whereby eligible voters are permitted to return, by mail or in person, voted paper ballots prior to an election.

Voters are typically required to fill out an application online or by mail in order to receive an absentee paper ballot from designated election authorities. No-excuse absentee voting is particularly useful for students, those with conflicting work schedules, and those who travel frequently and are otherwise unable to vote in person on Election Day.

Whereas some states allow voters to vote absentee only if they are permanently disabled, serve overseas, or live in certain rural areas, 27 states and the District of Columbia allow no-excuse absentee voting, which allows eligible voters to vote absentee for any reason. In adopting or updating absentee voting policies, states should allow any eligible voter to vote absentee for any reason whatsoever, no excuse needed.

This would ensure that all eligible Americans could cast their votes no matter what, even if they were simply out of town or unable to make it to the polls on Election Day but did not fit under one of the limited set of exemptions. Two states—Washington and Oregon—conduct all elections through vote-at-home, while Colorado has an exemplary model that combines vote-at-home with community vote centers where people can still cast their ballots in person.

Voters can take their time examining and researching the candidates and issues, and they can vote in the comfort of their own home before placing their voted ballot in the mail or dropping it off at a vote center or collection box. Colorado is revolutionizing election administration by putting voters first and giving them more opportunities to become registered and vote.

Colorado is a vote-at-home state but operates under a model that provides voters many options to cast their ballots. Once voters receive their ballot, which is sent to them automatically by the state, they can:. Colorado vote centers are open Monday through Saturday, for 15 days during general elections and 8 days in primary and off-year elections. Vote centers are conveniently located within and across counties; their precise location is determined through a public selection process whereby the public can provide feedback on proposed locations, including concerns over accessibility and convenience.

Voters who sign up for this free service receive regular updates—via email, text message, or an online portal—about the status of their ballot as well as when it is delivered to the elections division. During the elections, voter participation in states allowing vote-at-home was 10 percentage points higher, on average, than it was in other states.

Voters cannot engage in the voting process if they do not understand how it operates or are skeptical of its utility; this could offer, at least in part, an explanation for lower turnout. A report examining voting behavior in Utah during the elections found that voter participation increased by 5 to 7 percentage points in the 21 counties using vote-at-home rather than traditional polling places.

One area where researchers tend to agree is that vote-at-home increases voter participation in elections with historically low participation. In local special elections, for example, vote-at-home has been shown to increase participation by about 7. In implementing vote-at-home, states should abide by the Colorado model, which incorporates vote centers, as research suggests that voters prefer dropping their completed ballots off in person at a designated location rather than sending them through the mail.

Vote-at-home may be a particularly good option for states with permanent no-excuse absentee voting lists, where individuals sign up to automatically receive an absentee ballot each election and where a large percentage of voters cast absentee ballots by mail already—as is the case in Hawaii, Arizona, and Montana. Doing so would provide voters with more convenient options and would help to increase voter participation. Finally, vote-at-home may be useful for jurisdictions lacking election resources and sufficient numbers of poll workers or for jurisdictions in which voters are located long distances from polling places.

Even with the passage of affirmative policies, implementation matters. It is particularly important to make sure that enough resources are available to administer elections effectively. Poll closures, lack of voting machines, and insufficiently trained poll workers can contribute to long lines during voting periods and prevent eligible Americans from voting. For example, a study by the Brennan Center for Justice found that the 10 precincts with the longest lines in Florida had fewer poll workers than the statewide average.

For example, after Maricopa County, Arizona, reduced its number of polling places by 70 percent during the primary, voters were forced to wait in line for up to five hours. Polling place closures disproportionately affect communities of color.

In , North Carolina had fewer early polling places in 40 counties with large black communities. Seven of the locations that experienced closures were heavily African American, with longtime voters reporting that they would not participate in the elections due to mobility challenges and difficulty traveling longer distances to new polling places.

Lack of convenient polling places and registrar offices also has been a problem for Native American would-be voters. Additionally, 29 percent and 27 percent of respondents in South Dakota and Nevada, respectively, reported difficulty traveling to designated polling places to vote. Voters should not be forced to wait in line for hours to exercise their civic duty and for their voice to be heard in our democracy. Nor should certain groups have less access and fewer opportunities to register to vote and cast ballots.

Recognizing funding constraints on election administration, officials must provide enough polling places and poll workers to serve all communities equally. Leading researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT developed a resource allocation calculator to help election administrators across the country determine how many polling places, workers, or voting machines a jurisdiction needs based on a variety of factors, including the number of registered or eligible voters within a particular area.

Another way to reduce long lines is to adopt voter registration modernization reforms such as automatic voter registration, which ensures that voter lists are kept up-to-date, as inaccuracies or errors in voter registration databases can cause significant delays at polling places.

Automating the registration process with information the state already has on hand eliminates clerical errors and helps prevent unnecessary confusion during voting periods. Ensuring that jurisdictions have an adequate number of accessible polling locations and hours—as well as poll workers and voting equipment—to accommodate the communities they serve will help to ensure that the right to vote is fully realized.

This extends to voters who are disabled and who speak different languages. In , Americans with disabilities accounted for nearly 16 percent of the total eligible voter population, or A study by the GAO found that, of the polling places observed for accessibility in during early voting periods and on Election Day, 60 percent had at least one potential impediment, such as steep ramps, inadequate signage indicating accessible pathways, and insufficient parking. To ensure eligible Americans with limited English proficiency can participate in elections, Section of the Voting Rights Act requires certain jurisdictions to publish election materials—including voter registration information, election notices, and ballots—in other languages additional to English.

All eligible Americans must have equal opportunity to vote, including access to ballots and election materials that facilitate their ability to do so.

With help from local advocacy groups, covered jurisdictions should work closely with federal entities in order to ensure that they abide by federal law in providing language assistance to those who need it. And even if they are not covered by Section of the Voting Rights Act, any jurisdiction with a large population of limited English-proficient speakers should ensure that polling places are staffed with bilingual poll workers.

When discussing policies for increasing voter participation, it is necessary to acknowledge the more than 6 million American citizens barred from exercising their fundamental right to vote because of ex-offender disenfranchisement laws.

An estimated 93 percent—or about 14 million—of formerly incarcerated people are eligible to vote based on current rights restoration laws. In , when voter participation in the United States reached almost 62 percent, one study found that participation for eligible formerly incarcerated people in five states—Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Missouri, and North Carolina—averaged around A study of formerly incarcerated people who were released from parole in Erie County, New York, found that, while 36 percent of participants were registered to vote prior to their conviction, only about 13 percent had registered or reregistered to vote post-conviction.

Beyond this, studies have found that a negative relationship exists between voter disenfranchisement and black participation, even among those not directly involved in the criminal justice system. For example, in communities with high percentages of disenfranchised black voters, eligible black voters are less likely to vote. Low participation among formerly incarcerated people may be due, at least in part, to the lack of information provided to them about their voting rights while incarcerated and upon release.

According to a survey, of ex-offenders who held an accurate understanding of how their convictions affected their voting rights, a majority planned to vote in future elections. States have approached ex-offender re-enfranchisement in different ways, which have included issuing executive orders, pursuing reform legislatively, granting individual pardons, and offering ballot initiatives.

For example, in April , New York Gov. Cuomo issued an executive order restoring voting rights to an estimated 36, formerly incarcerated people on parole. John Bel Edwards D signed a bill restoring rights to formally incarcerated formerly incarcerated people five years after their release, even if they remain on probation or parole. In , Wyoming enacted a law to automatically restore voting rights to certain first-time ex-offenders convicted of nonviolent felonies upon completion of their sentence.

McAuliffe D relied on individual pardons to restore the rights of more than , formerly incarcerated people who completed their sentences. Here, it is worth repeating that demographics and voting cultures differ across states and even by jurisdiction, particularly in terms of outreach to and engagement of formerly incarcerated people whose voting rights are restored.

Moreover, it is important to consider the The bipartisan bill was estimated to affect 10, parolees in the state. Americans who complete their sentences should have their right to vote and voter registration automatically restored upon release from prison, as is done in Rhode Island.

Of course, any re-enfranchisement policy must be combined with a robust education and outreach program carried out by the state and detention facilities. The program must provide formerly incarcerated people with information verbally, electronically, and through hard copy.

They must be informed of how their conviction affects their voting rights. If voting rights are not automatically restored upon release, public officials should provide continuing guidance on how they may be restored upon release or completion of probation or parole. In particular, corrections, probation, and parole officers should provide voter registration services when a justice-involved individual becomes eligible to vote. This report focuses on pro-voter policies to expand the electorate and improve the voter experience.

Part of this involves protecting the right of all eligible Americans to have their voices heard, which means dismantling voter suppression. It is an attack on the integrity of our democracy when the voices of eligible Americans are silenced as individuals are turned away at the polls or removed from state voter registration rolls because of restrictive laws and burdensome practices. Each election cycle, countless eligible Americans are prevented from voting because of voter suppression measures, including strict voter ID laws, voter purges, and documentary proof of citizenship requirements for voter registration.

Before they even get to the polls, eligible voters are being removed from voter registration lists, which can result in them being turned away on Election Day. A report by the bipartisan U. Election Assistance Commission found that there was a For example, in the lead-up to the election, Ohio removed thousands of people—,, according to some estimates—from its state voter rolls for failing to vote in previous elections.

And for Hispanics and Asian Americans, those chances increase to 1 in 6 and 1 in 7, respectively. Communities of color, young people, and low-income Americans are also disproportionately affected by discriminatory voter registration requirements such as documentary proof of citizenship laws. These laws require eligible Americans to provide proof of citizenship in the form of a passport, birth certificate, or naturalization papers before they are added to the voter rolls.

A: No, because I'm not into technology since I'm older. But yes because it would be more convenient to other people. A: Just go out and vote. It might be hard but in the end your point will get across and your voice will be heard. Interviewed 5 people with similar responses. Some were one worded answers due to rushed time while others were more elaborate. Log in to post a comment. Log In. Q : Why did you come out and vote today?

A: Because I feel as though my vote will make a difference.