KeepIn the Vote
In the last hundred years, no voter turnout for any federal election has topped 62.8%, and that was in 1960 during the festive squeaker of a grudge match between pretty boy Jack Kennedy and grizzled bruiser Dick Nixon. Most of the time, nearly half of America’s eligible voters don’t vote. Why do political editorialists, commentators, critics, analysts, pundits, and pontificators of every kind always scold us about this? For example, the MIT Election Data Science Lab tells us, “Voter turnout is a measure of civic participation that many people believe best gauges the health of the electoral process.” This from an institution next to the city of Boston, which has been under an almost Soviet system of one-party control for nearly a hundred years, with voter turnout in certain wards known to exceed the number of people drunk in the Irish bars and the number of people dead in the Catholic cemeteries combined. “Health of the electoral process”? Turn your head and cough, MIT. Since 1980, U.S. presidential election voter turnout has averaged 53.7%.
By P. J. O’Rourke
American Consequences
53
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