Engagement, not process, helps drive voter turnout
WHEN Oklahoma enacted a law requiring citizens to provide identification before voting, critics claimed thousands would be arbitrarily denied the right to vote. If last week’s record turnout in the Republican presidential primary is what happens when votes are suppressed, one wonders just how many people would participate otherwise.
That voter ID doesn’t disenfranchise people is obvious, even as the law has prevented some noneligible voters from casting ballots that effectively negate the legitimate votes of other Oklahomans.
Oklahoma’s experience in this year’s Republican presidential preference primary mirrors the experience of other states that have seen record turnout from both political parties after voter ID laws were implemented.
On the flip side of the coin, efforts to drive up turnout by making voting easier are not having the intended effect, as noted by Adam J. Berinsky, a political science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Writing in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Berinsky notes that social scientists have long believed more people would vote if the process was simpler. A 1980 study argued that the process of registering effectively created barriers to voting. At that time, Berinsky notes, registration was often much more complex than the actual act of casting a ballot.
A 1988 study even suggested that easing registration requirements would generate greater socioeconomic equality in the composition of the electorate.
In the years since, lawmakers have done as researchers asked. In 1993, Congress voted to require states to allow voter registration at motor vehicle agencies and through mail-in procedures. In various states, lawmakers have gone further, making early voting easier, reducing restrictions on absentee voting, and even authorizing universal voting by mail.
Thanks to the changes made over the last 40 years, Berinsky notes that “it has never been easier to cast a ballot than it is today.” But the results of those reforms have “surprised scholars and reformers alike. The recent wave of electoral reforms does not seem to have had any significant effect on voter turnout. And there is even evidence that some of the new reforms may have actually decreased turnout.”
Berinsky says one reason for that trend, according to work done by another researcher, is that “early voting thwarts traditional mobilization activities, thereby counteracting any gains that could rise from lowering the direct costs of voting.”
Berinsky adds another explanation for the failure of voting reform laws to generate greater participation. “The problem, I believe, is that when we talk about the ‘costs’ of voting, we have been thinking about the wrong kinds of costs — the direct costs of registering to vote and casting a ballot.”
He argues that “the more significant costs of participation are the cognitive costs of becoming involved with and informed about the political world. Studies of voting from the last 60 years make this point clear. Political interest and engagement, after all, determine to a large extent who votes and who does not.”
In other words, if people aren’t interested in politics and actively invested in political debates, then they are not likely to vote — even if it’s astoundingly easy to do so. Instead of making the physical voting process their concern, politicians who want to increase turnout need to focus on voter engagement. Sometimes, the simplest answer is also the correct answer.