Low turnouts = dire consequences
BY JOY-ANN REID -
joy-ann.reid@nbcuni.com
Last Tuesday’s midterm vote produced, at 36.4 percent, the lowest voter turnout of any U.S. election in 72 years (the 1942 election, with its 33.9 percent participation rate, took place in the midst of World War II). It also reinforced a few durable truths. Among them: that the young, the non-white and the not-so-well-to-do have largely exited the democratic process, except when it’s time to elect a president.
The reason why will continue to be a matter of debate. Much of the critical mass of Senate contests took place in the South, and 2014 was the first midterm election after the Supreme Court ripped the heart out of the Voting Rights Act, prompting many red states to rush through restrictive voting laws aimed at distinct populations that tend to prefer Democrats.
And yet, obstruction, however broad, can’t explain the near halving of the electorate compared to the one that elected Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. Even the strictest photo ID law can’t account for the historically low turnout last week.
In fact, the electorate has operated like a kind of sine wave since the 1960s, rising to two-thirds of eligible voters every four years for the presidential contest, then dropping to around 40 percent two years after. And those who choose to withdraw from the decision-making over who runs their states and localities, and who represents them in Congress, tend to be the very people who rely most on the federal government’s guarantees of their human rights, and who are most subject to state government’s exercise of power over their daily lives....
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