There’s an Election on Tuesday. Here’s Why You Should Vote.
Americans have a penchant for ignoring state and local elections. Choosing not to vote can have serious consequences.
In case you missed it, this Tuesday, November 2nd is an election day. No, this isn’t a presidential election or the Congressional midterm election that will take place next year. On Tuesday, there will be state and local elections. Broadly speaking, Americans have abysmal voter turnout rates. Young Americans, between the ages of 18 and 29, are the least likely to vote. Voter participation is especially low in state and local elections.
Part of this can be attributed to voter suppression tactics, but we also can’t discount the role of voter apathy. Americans tend to, incorrectly, believe that state and local elections don’t matter and therefore do not participate in them. As a result, many unqualified candidates are elected to state and local governments. Americans usually don’t realize how important local elections are until the unqualified candidate becomes the unqualified lawmaker.
In the 2020 presidential election, approximately 61.5 percent of the voting-age population cast ballots. This was a precipitous increase in comparison to previous elections. According to a study conducted by the Pew Research Center, “…turnout was the highest since at least 1980, the earliest year in our analysis, and possibly much longer.” This trend was seen among young voters, as well. The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement found, “Half of Americans ages 18–29 cast a ballot in the 2020 general election, one of the highest youth voting rates in recent history and an 11-point increase from 2016 (from 39 percent to 50 percent.)”
Yet, despite this massive jump in voter participation, “the U.S. still lags behind most of its developed-nation peers when it comes to electoral participation. Out of 35 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development for which estimates of voting-age population in the most recent national election were available, U.S. turnout ranked an underwhelming 24th.”
Researchers at the Pew Research Center theorized that increased voter turnout in the 2020 election could be largely attributed to, “…the bitter fight between incumbent President Donald Trump and challenger Joe Biden: A preelection survey found a record share of registered voters (83 percent) saying it ‘really matter[ed]’ who won.” Here, we can see the very clear cause and effect between our perceived importance of an election and voter turnout. The more importance we place on an election, the more likely we are to vote.
Of course, the corollary of this pattern is that Americans typically don’t vote in elections that we perceive as unimportant, i.e. state and local elections. Young Americans especially fall into this pattern. A Portland State University study, entitled “Who Votes for Mayor?,” aims to continually assess voter participation trends in mayoral elections. The initial results of the study found, “few people vote in mayoral elections, and those who do vote tend to be older and more affluent than the population at large and less likely to be people of color.” In the 2015 mayoral races, “residents 65 years and older were a median of seven times more likely to vote than those ages 18 to 34, who frequently registered turnout rates in the single digits.”
State and local elections are vitally important: “Every day, over half a million local elected officials are making important and influential decisions about core services like police and fire, transportation, housing, and drinking water. As cities experience robust growth, they are becoming important laboratories for positive civic change, especially as political gridlock at the federal level continues.”
The COVID-19 pandemic clearly demonstrated the importance of state and local governments. As COVID-19 spread unchecked throughout the United States, the federal government did nothing to protect Americans or mitigate the spread of the virus. Mask mandates, stay-at-home orders, and lockdowns were imposed by state and local officials. Some cities and states with responsible and informed lawmakers protected their constituents, while others were just as laissez-faire as the Trump administration.
In addition to public safety, local officials have a direct impact on education. Most Boards of Education are elected positions. Want to know how various Boards of Education are banning books on race, sex, and LGBTQ issues? Because most people didn’t vote, unhinged conspiracy theorists were elected to the Board of Education, and they are now inflicting serious harm onto our nation’s school system.
Now let’s discuss the voting process. As previously mentioned, voter suppression laws exist to discourage, or in many cases make it impossible, for marginalized communities to vote. Why do these laws exist? Election laws are determined at the state, not federal, level of government. When we don’t vote, unscrupulous politicians are elected to office and rewrite the election rules to ensure that they can stay in power. Yes, it is a paradox, but the remedy to voter suppression laws is to vote in state and local elections.
Americans need to shift our perception about which elections are considered “important.” Every election is important. It is our civic duty to stay informed and vote in all elections, no matter how minor they might seem. Choosing not to vote is just as consequential as voting. Keep that in mind before you decide to stay at home on Tuesday.
