Turnout Rates In America

Voters are vital to picking the politicians that allow the country to run. Each vote helps a hopeful candidate move closer to their dream of being an elected official. If this is important, why doesn’t everybody show up to vote? There could be many reasons, including, work, transportation, or no desire to vote. It is important to note that this essay is not about why turnout rates are low, but instead to see why states differ in turnout rates. This is intriguing since there is such a wide difference between state turnout rates, for example, states like Alabama or Mississippi have at points had only 40% of eligible voters turning to the polls, while up to 75% voters vote in states like Minnesota and Wisconsin. There could many explanations …show more content…
These explanations are further helped by what Daniel Elazar describes as three distinct political cultures, individualistic, moralistic, and traditionalistic. When looking at these three cultures we can start to see trends, for instance both coasts are mostly individualistic in nature, while most of the midwest is moralistic, and the south is traditionalistic. When looking at their voting trends we can see similarities within each of these cultures. Individualistic states generally view government as a corrupt entity, but it will be so by its very nature, thusly they turnout rate is average to below average, among their states. Moralistic cultures view it as their duty to be good citizens, help the poor and needy, be kind to one another, and of course vote, which makes their turnout rates generally among the highest in the nation. As for traditionalistic, their traditional roots keep the lower classes from voting while only the elite participate, making their turnout rate among the lowest in the nation (Elazar 93-102). Others, like Robert Jackman will even take this argument and take it out of the country, finding that European states like Norway or England may have a population more keen on participating in elections (Jackman 405-407). …show more content…
Rachel Sondheimer characterizes this idea in one quote stating that “The level of education argues indicates not only the skills and duties learned in school but characteristics of the individual unrelated to school… years of schooling reflect family background more than any other demographic characteristic does” (Sondheimer 175-76). This is Sondheimer’s argument, that education plays a key role, but by how much, is her question. she found that some programs are more effective than normal high school for raising the amount of voters, but nonetheless education is important and makes a difference for the voting population (Sondheimer 176-187). As we can tell that these individually affected parts are incredibly important in understanding why people do what they do. But Sondheimer subtly argues there may already be a predisposition to being a good civil servant and that seeking higher education is already and effect of that, which would also make change difficult, just like changing the political

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