by John Asgeirson

Created on: September 09, 2008

On November 4th, 2008 people in the United States will select their next president and members of Congress in addition to filling many state and local offices. It is anticipated that this historic election will only attract 60% of those eligible to vote

According to a US Census Bureau survey from November 2004 the most popular reason for not voting was too busy or schedule conflicts, followed by illness or disability. These two reasons comprised almost 35% of the respondents. Don't like candidates or campaign issues or not interested covers another 20% of the respondents and another 20% have either other reasons for not voting or refused to answer the question or don't know why they did not vote.

Smaller groups cited being out of town, transportation problems, and registration problems, bad weather, or inconvenient polling places.

In this survey 16,334 people were questioned about their reasons for not voting.

The people who are in the public election business are attempting to answer these issues in what may be an in vain attempt to increase turnout in one of the more important aspects of the democratic process.

Early voting, absentee ballots, voting by mail, and improved registration methods are being used to deal with the problems related to being busy and scheduling issues, disability, being out of town, transportation problems, bad weather and inconvenient polling places. Given these improvements in the ability to vote it would seem that the only reason for not voting would be a lack of motivation.

Too many people are not interested enough to vote or don't like the candidates or issues. I believe other reasons, don't knows or those that refused to answer also show too little interest in the process. There are many ways to beat lines at the polling places.

There are still reasons that the votes of the poor are suppressed.

Voting on Tuesday, may have an impact on less affluent people being able to vote. People who are well off can afford to take time off from work to vote. Other groups may actually get time off as an incentive to go to the polls.

Voter education is also targeted to those who are most likely to vote. Senior Citizens, the wealthy, union members, and the college educated are less likely to say they are not interested and therefore more likely to vote.

It may be counterintuitive but those poor and most likely to be disenfranchised who would benefit the most from a strong showing at the polls are most likely to say they are not interested in voting.

The status quo, incumbents and the politically powerful may also tend to suppress voting by encouraging schemes that would tend to discourage the already disenfranchised from registering to vote. It is axiomatic that the poor have more difficulties in getting picture a picture id or proof of citizenship to qualify for voting. And those that do grass root registration drives can have their efforts challenged in the name of fighting voter fraud.

A truly functioning democracy needs to make voting as easy as possible and the methodology for voting needs to be organized in a manner that votes cast are counted and the public has confidence in the results.

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