Good try, Russ. You're missing the real problem. People don't vote because there aren't any candidates. I've voted in primaries and general elections for more than forty years. This time around I thought long and hard before voting. But for Pete Sorenson I would not have voted. Why bother, when there is only one candidate available in most 'races'? And then there is the problem that the only candidate or candidates have been pre-selected according to their ability to get support from monied interests, who have radically different expections about government than mine. How about letting us to vote 'yes' or 'no' when there is only one candidate?

Russ, What a great analysis!

There is low turnout for voting because our initiatives are stupid and mean spirited. Why vote for meanness or unintelligent drivel? Also - our candidates are so extreme that normal people are screwed no matter who wins. I always find it hard to vote because I am single with no wife, no kids, and seen as a pariah by the normal politician (as a canvasser told me once "one person does not make a family").

It is best, sadky, to not vote for any candidate and to vote NO on all the garbage initiatives.

Great column, Russell!

Great analysis. I'm also concerned that it is not just the traditional younger age groups that aren't voting, but that those cohorts may never vote. That makes the future pretty frightening. Some people are taking action now to turn this around. A big 'thank you' to the Oregon Bus Project for exciting and ambitious programs (Trick or Vote, Bus Trips, PolitiCorps, etc.) to involve young citizens in the political process. We need to follow their lead!

The other states are not the only ones to blame for kids having a terrible education in civics. Oregon schools are just as bad as those in California, Washington, or any other state when it comes to learning about the fundamentals of government.

"We dumb down the vocabulary of civic life because some consultant told us it would stop the decline of readership and improve broadcast rating."

The media, just like any other business, will write, say, or show whatever makes money. For the last 50 years broadcast TV has been showing nightly news, and every decade the viewership of that broadcast has declined.

"We emphasize conflict and downplay process on the advice of the same consultants. Is it any wonder voters do not know how their government operates?"

When exactly have we emphasised process over conflict? -C.

Great work Russ -

A couple comments -

Christopher Nicholson writes, "When exactly have we emphasised process over conflict?"

Well, I grew up in Portland where the three major network broadcast channels in fact did visit hearings, tell us how the process worked, and get interviews that enlightened the viewers as to what was really going on. You can make process interesting if you do it right. I didn't learn about Oregon's Joint Ways and Means Committee in school, I learned it watching Oregon TV. So, to answer the question, that would have been roughly from 1960 to 1970.

John in the first posted response brings up an interesting point - part of why people don't vote is the lack of candidates. Well, John is right and wrong at the same time. On specifics, John you are wrong. Over here in the 2nd Congressional District, we had 4 strong and able candidates running for the Democratic Party nomination, and Democrats only voted a little stronger than the average for the State. Where you are right is that there are not enough contested races.

I have been the Chair of the Crook Co. Democrats for the last two years, my term of office having ended (finally) just a few weeks ago. Crook Co. is less than half of our Legislative House District. I couldn't find anyone willing to run as a Democrat. We have thousands of Democrats, but the main reason none would run was that they could not afford to. I don't mean the cost of the race, I mean the cost of winning. If you win a seat in our Legislature, which is housed in Salem about 150 miles away, you literally have to give up your business or job and move to Salem for 6/7 months every other year, and be on call to run over to Salem for special sessions. I thought about running for the House seat - for about 1 minute. I'm a real estate appraiser. My work comes in one assignment at a time. If I'm not around, my work goes away, and the people that send me work (about half are out of State) go away permanently. The Legislative pay is so low as to not even cover my expenses of travel and lodging while in Salem. -- I'd have to be retired to afford to run for office.

John, underlying the problem you stated is a more key problem - you have to have the wealth to run for office, win, and serve.

Points well taken.

Disclaimer: I'm a life-long Independent. Never registered for either party.

I think that many people don't participate because of the current two party system. Let's face it, the Democratic party is a wholly owned subsidiary of the unions, the abortion rights lobby, etc, while the Republican party is beholden to corporate America and the NRA. So long as those interest groups wield such great power over the parties, we will continue to have gridlock. The real tragedy, particularly in Oregon, is that there are almost no conservative Democrats or liberal republicans left anymore. The Republicans and Democrats are losing support...because they both deserve to!

By the way, this fall, I'm voting for the incumbant Governor because I think he really hasn't done a bad job. But you know what, I probably only agree with him on about 50 percent of the issues. I'm also voting for the Republican candidate for the Legislature, because I've seen what one-party rule has done at the federal level, and I'm quite convinced it will be just as bad if one party controls all the cards in the state. I'm always amazed at people on the blog who rail against the one-party rule in DC, but then turn around and advocate for the same thing (just different party) in Salem. No thanks!

I agree with John (above)...I'd love to be able to vote "no" on candidates. If "none of the above" won the most votes, the parties would be forced to put up two new ones...and we keep at it until we get better people in office.

Russ,

Very interesting work. Good point about a large block of voters coming from out of state (Damn Californians!). I think there are definately multiple reasons why Oregon has such low turn out.

I still maintain voting is an act of civic responiblity.

Many non-voters insist it doesn’t matter how they vote, politicians represent their campaign contributors, not their constituents. They are not wrong.

Well, I hope that you and all others that believe this statement (as I do,) support and vote for the campaign finance measures that will make the ballot in November.

Let me elaborate on my comment that the problem is that there are no candidates, which is both a symptom and a cause.

The job of a candidate is to stir up interest in the election among each of his/her consituencies. With more candidates, more constituencies get targeted. Really good candidates in competitive races realize that the outcome can hinge on a few votes and try to reach out to broader constituencies by understanding and responding to their needs. They make the stakes of not voting clear. When there is only one person running (the prevailing condition in most primary elections), the candidate just coasts, stirs up no interest, making a lack of candidates a cause for low voter turnout.

Low voter turnout is also a symptom of the fact that neither the Party nor Monied Interests like competitive races. The Party prefers to reward its in-crowd of professional politicians, rather than serve as a gateway for myriad interests to access the political system. Outsiders are generally shunned. Monied Interests prefer to fund candidates who are known quantities and have a track record of putting their needs above all else. The result is a mediocre, loyal candidate who generates little interest among voters, except by positioning himself as the lesser of two evils in the general election.

Civics lessons and media education may be great, but what we really need is to create a broad, popular awareness of the cynical way that Monied Interests and the Two Party Duopoly suppress the choice of candidates to keep potential voters' interests from being represented.

I have two points of disagreement with the analysis:

"More sophisticated voters say voter registration is not designed to produce a large turnout. Voter registration is deliberately designed to produce a predictable turnout. They are not wrong."

Voter registration is not "designed to produce" any kind of turnout; voter registration is designed to provide access to the process, and some credible structure for accountability.

"To maintain their dwindling control over the political system both Republicans and Democrats use redistricting to pack legislative districts with predictable voters while diluting independent voters by spreading them out in districts where they are impotent minorities, thus disenfranchising unpredictable independents. No wonder some voters get the impression their votes don’t count."

Redistricting has been a control issue with the big two for generations. Given that it occurs only once every ten years, I seriously doubt that it has the affect of "disenfranchising unpredictable independents" to the extent Mr. Sadler want us to believe.

The analysis makes some good observations, but I don't think it contributes much of a guide for redress.

I don't know which 18-40 year-olds you hang out with, but many of the ones I know don't even know who the candidates are.

In campaigns where the candidate is under 40 and/or the campaign manager is a local person under 40, those people already have friends under 40 and those friends can do outreach to their friends, etc. But then, I'm talking from the point of view of Marion County which had better May turnout than the average, and had campaigns with very active young people as candidates or staff.

I've found younger people to be more issue-oriented. They question the capacity of individual candidates to make much difference, and they want to do something themselves rather than relying on older people to fix problems. PSU hosted a candidates' forum on May 1 which about 20 interested students attended, while outside thousands of students rallied and marched in support of immigration rights.

Before we expect young people to vote, we need to look at how they are (and aren't) given information in the corporate media and by other means, and whether indeed their opinions are valued. And we should look at culturally appropriate alternatives for reaching all underparticipating groups. My son took out ads on Facebook for me (college-specific web sites only open to college students). I would do more campus visits beyond Lewis & Clark and PSU, if I run again. I've found young people just as willing to engage as older folks, but they are more interested in personal, in-depth interactions rather than skimming a mailer or a paragraph in the newspaper. And if they don't believe they have enough information to make a reasoned, educated choice, they don't vote rather than voting blindly. That goes for the young-parents/workers age group, too. I applaud those who make that active decision not to vote without adequate information, even while lamenting the capacity to reach them.

The comment about Oregon students not having good civics education in schools is simply not true. I spoke with classes at Madison, Jefferson, and Roosevelt high schools during my campaign, and have been a parent at Wilson for 6 years. I'm hugely impressed with the level of understanding of the students, and with the teachers who encourage them to think. When you were in school, did you have the governor of your state speak to your class, or even a city council candidate?

I'm glad to hear that Portland schools have risen to the civics challenge. Out in the hinterlands, I'm not so sure that is true. During the fifteen years I spent as an elected official, I was often invited to speak to civics classes (especially when my own kids were in high school), and was appalled by the lack of understanding by teachers on the political process. I was asked to speak about campaigning in one class and was told that it was common knowledge that nobody could win an election if they had a picture of a pig in their brochure. I then pulled out a campaign brochure (from a friend who had been elected to congress) which included a picture of him working his pig farm. The teachers' knowledge on paricular issues rarely extended beyond what they had read in the local newspaper.

Those experiences were ten years ago. I hope things have progressed since then, and that maybe my experience was atypical.

The problem with trying to raise voter turnout is that if we succeed, it means the number of uninformed and less-interested voters will increase, probably leading to worse results and an exacerbation of the downward spiral of public discourse.

How about this for devil's advocacy? Encourage people not to vote unless they have a good reason to. Then bend all efforts to giving them a good reason.

I agree that a major barrier to attracting good candidates is sheer economic survival. Especially in politics, you get what you pay for, and if we're not willing as a society to make public service less of a personal and family sacrifice, we'll continue to get mostly candidates who are either wealthy, retired, or driven by ideology or a thirst for power. That said, there are exceptions to this tendency, and we should try to identify and encourage them as much as possible.

My 21 year old daughter - who is very well educated and very vocal in expressing her progressive / socialist beliefs - refuses to vote because, in her words, "all the candidates who have even a remote chance of winning eventually sell out to the corporate establishment, so why waste my time?" I would like to have some strong positive evidence to refute her opinion, but after voting and watching politics for 31 + years, I am afraid I am inclined to agree with her.

I think people should re-read Peter Forsyth's post. The number of people voting in the primary and the percentage of <u>eligible</u> voters have actually increased since 1998. In other words, participation in elections by people in Oregon has increased. There are many more people who have taken the time to become <u>registered voters</u> than there were in 1998, but a smaller percentage of those people are voting. Its likely those two things are related, that the increase in registered voters has come from people more likely to skip a low profile election.

I also think there ia a difference between having a reason not to vote and not having a reason to vote. There are a few people in the first group, but most people who don't vote just don't have a good enough reason to go to the trouble. Russell points out some of the reasons they don't, but perhaps ignores the most basic. Many people simply don't see that the outcome of elections matters much in their lives.

Even where the outcome does matter, it is not clear that who votes matters very much to the outcome except in very close elections. It probably mattered in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004. But it is only in those very tight elections where there is enough difference between voters and non-voters to effect the outcome.

Finally, I think Russell's analysis ignores an obvious reason people don't vote. There are active efforts ine very campaign to suppress the vote by candidates. Negative campaigning and a variety of other techniques (including throwing eligible votres off the voting roles in Florida) are used to reduce the number of an opponents supporters who will get to the polls.

We also need to consider the impact of the lengthy voting period of vote by mail. I think the campaign has become very backloaded with almost all the advertising and mailing timed to happen when ballots are in people's hands. The result is people take an interest in the election after they have to register. That certainly discourages new voters.

so it's easy to not care what the Navigation is doing, or the Captain, much less worry about critical flaws in the infrastructure.

Especially when there is precisely nothing you can do about them no matter how much you worry. They are way beyond your control. I think the analogy is apt. Who knows how many worried passengers asked about the danger of icebergs - it did them no good.

Part of the problem is our sense that the size and complexity of the federal government overwhelms us at the individual level. Every local election has something of value for every voter to address, but our sense of futlility over the national scope often diminishes our incentive to at least do what we can at home. We need to do a better job of differentiating our influence into manageable pieces.

if the Titantic's high-end clientelle had all gotten together

Thus demonstrating the reality for most Americans. If Phil Knight wants the U of O to do something it doesn't matter whether he voted in the last election or not. And it largely doesn't matter whether you did or not either.

The reason the younger generation isn't voting doesn't matter to the power elite. They want fewer voters so they don't have to justify themselves.

Every politician should be elected for life and then we can save money on elections :)

Perhaps the reason people don't vote is they aren't involved in government decisions, rather than the other way around. If we focused on more citizen involvement in the decisions, and less on who the decision makers are, we would get more people engaged in both parts of the process. They would come to understand why who makes the decision often determines what decision gets made.

If you have a tool that you're not informed about using and it doesn't work, how much do you use it to solve your major problems?

How does that saying go: "Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves"

The dark concept, "shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations" is recognized in many cultures. The first generation generates the wealth (creativity), the second generation preserves it (stasis), and the third generation dissipates it (entropy).

Isn't this the process that the US is in right now? We're living in the time of the "third generation". All the work that the Founding Fathers and subsequent generations who built the infrastructure that made this country is now just going to ground.

Before posting more, I'll just throw in two quotes that I think frame the dividing line between the generations that votes, and those that don't that Russell seems totally clueless about:

"Ask not what your country can do for you: Ask what you can do for your country"

"It's the place where my prediction from the sixties finally came true: In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.' I'm bored with that line. I never use it anymore. My new line is,In fifteen minutes everybody will be famous.'"

Without making any value judgements, or assigning responsible, simply think about what those two comments say about the dominant zeitgeist of the generations they represent (and the values they impart to their children) and what that means for representative government.

When one defines “electorate” as only those voters willing to participate in the process, those who refuse to participate cede their power to the electorate to vote their proxy. There will always be political activists and those carrying water for interest groups, but the majority of Americans simply possess a sense of social responsibility which overrides their desire to cede their only means of effecting the process. The reasons for avoiding this civic responsibility are myriad as noted above. As a card carrying member of the electorate, I would like to thank those who by default have placed your faith in my vote, but caution that there are many more members of the “electorate” who have interests which are aimed at creating social changes which the majority of all eligible voters do not support. Unfortunately when the number of interested voters grows and those voting out of a sense of responsibility lags, the power balance shifts to favor a resolute minority with strong interests in the outcome. This skews the democratic principle of majority rule. Thanks Russell for reminding us to awaken those eligible - to exercise their own damn proxy and stand up to this greedy, self indulgent, close minded, paternalistic, isolationist, power hungry machine known as the GOP. We must encourage participation based on a sense of social responsibility so that the will of the majority prevails. Not just the will of a majority of the “electorate” but of all eligible voters. Ask not what you can do for yourself, ask what you can do for others. Vote. Oh yeah, and please don’t shirk jury duty either? Thanks & Peace -please?

If you're in a position to call Russell "totally clueless"

You know that is a misrepresentation of what he said. What he said was:

"I'll just throw in two quotes that I think frame the dividing line between the generations that votes, and those that don't that Russell seems totally clueless about:"

Many of the things you have listed may well represent the divide he suggests exists. I don't see any world changing results from any of the projects you list. Perhaps there are some, but they seem to be mostly spectacles whose value is in the attention they grab, not their achievements. Which is precisely the point he seemed to be making.

And I think he is correct, that many people, young and old, measure the value of public action by the affirmation it receives in the public media. There is little, if any, fame to be gained by simply voting. Maybe publicizing the names of everyone who has already registered and/or voted would get out more young voters.

BTW, it is not at all clear that the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Voter Owned Elections or the some of the other projects you list are the products of "younger folks" unless you mean people under 65. Maybe they are - but I would like to see some evidence for it.

Ross- your partial quote of my post doesn't do much to convince me that I misrepresented Ask

Here is the post I made for all those wondering what Pete is talking about:

Posted by: Ross Williams | Jul 12, 2006 7:23:50 AM

BTW, it is not at all clear that the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Voter Owned Elections or the some of the other projects you list are the products of "younger folks" unless you mean people under 65. Maybe they are - but I would like to see some evidence for it.

Pete,

Thanks for the clarification. I wasn't trying to be critical just helpfully pointing out the areas of your post where I can help with some empirical support, and other areas where I think the points are a bit more shaky.

I don't want to get into the "fame" thing either. Not sure where that is coming from.

A few suggestions: 1. Have more votes and referendums on specific issues at the time the issues command public attention. 2. We may be fortunate that not everyone votes. 3. If Oregon placed relatively more emphasis on economics in high schools then graduates might better appreciate the economic issues at stake when they vote. 4. We may have created governments so complex and all-encompassing that they exceed the ability of elected officials to ably manage.