Don’t Always Vote? Then Guess What. It’s YOU That Helps Elect All These Terrible Politicians

Every time you stay home on election day, you’re handing power to extremists. Here’s why.

Image © 2017 Ken Crossland

BY KEN CROSSLAND

“I really thought about voting, but I was kinda busy that day.”

“Oh, it’s fine that I stayed home. I’m in a blue state. I know plenty of other people will vote for my guy.”

”I live in a red state and the other guy is surely going to win. Why bother to come out?”

”I’m staying home. I couldn’t possibly pick either of these clowns.”

“So what if I didn’t vote? I’m only one person; my vote doesn’t really mean that much anyway.”

There’s a never-ending supply of seemingly good reasons not to vote in America. So many, in fact, that voting can feel like a purely optional activity — something you should only do if the mood is really striking you. The importance of voting ranks right up there with eating more vegetables. Sure, we know we should be getting that extra serving of broccoli, but we also know that skipping it probably won’t kill us. But is that actually true?

On the surface, not voting seems like a minor shirking of civic responsibility — like not recycling a yogurt container because it’s simply too gross to wash out. You’re passing the buck, but do you ever wonder who you’re passing it to? We hear constant complaining about the people that do vote in elections (“Trump supporters are racists that are killing America!” “Clinton supporters are smug, Wall Street sycophants!”), yet we never question the morality of the people who stay home. Are they doing something wrong?

It turns out, they are. Each and every election, non-voters are helping to make the American government more ideologically extreme, and less responsive to the needs of the public. And the worst part? They have no idea they’re even doing it.

The devil in the election returns

Here’s a sobering fact about the people elected to run America’s government — they’re able to win with almost nobody voting for them.

Understanding the importance of voter turnout begins when we question one of the most fundamental parts of election coverage: How we process the results. After the voting closes, we flip on the TV or visit our favorite news site, anxiously awaiting the returns. They’re delivered, with a wave of excitement, like a final sports score:

“Candidate X defeated Candidate Y 55 to 45. It was a ten-point drubbing!”

Big win for Candidate X! Time to crack open some champagne.

But before you do, look at that sentence again. What did we really just learn from that election result? Believe it or not, almost nothing. Candidate X getting 55% of the vote is a meaningless statistic. Why? Because it ignores the data that actually matters, like, how many people were available to vote in this election, and how many of them came to the polls?

“Who cares? Candidate X won by ten points. Case closed.”

Here’s why this matters — and matters a lot. Let’s say the number of people eligible to vote in this election was 100,000, yet only 35,000 showed up. Things begin to get a little more interesting. Candidate X got 55% of the vote, alright, but when we take a broader look at the results, it’s now a pathetic victory — they earned a win with a grand total of just 19,250 votes. Candidate X is in office, and able to make life and death decisions, yet 80,750 people, the vast majority of the electorate — didn’t vote for them. Because of low turnout, 19.25% of the population chose the leader for the other 80.75%.

Scary, right? Wonder what’s even more terrifying? This happens in almost every election in the Unites States.

The voting pool: Bigger is always better.

When you decide not to vote, it feels like a choice that only affects you, right?

“Well yeah. I know I’m giving up my vote, but come on — it’s just one out of millions. It can’t possibly affect anything.”

Here’s the problem with that thinking: Elections aren’t a solo activity; it’s a task that’s spread equally among members of a community. A couple of people want the job of being your representative, and everyone of voting-age gets to decide who that person will be. A powerful concept, right? It’s one of the major selling-points of democracy.

But what happens when you decide to opt out? That’s easy. Someone else will make your decision for you. That’s the catch when you skip elections — thinning out the voting pool invariably reduces the variety (and quality) of opinions remaining within the electorate. The people you leave to make your choice? It’s possible they may not have your best interests in mind at all. If this smaller pool contains a disproportionate amount of extremists, which happens whenever turnout is lower, congratulations, they’re the ones who now get to make all the decisions about who’s in charge of the country.

Didn’t expect that, did you?

Take a look at the current ruling majority of the United States; the government isn’t just right-wing — it’s hard right-wing. Does this reflect an America where most people are hyper-conservative? Not even close. Americans, as a collective, aren’t very extreme at all. As Pew Research indicates, most Americans are actually pretty center-left. 48% of the population identifies as Democratic-leaning, while 44% say Republican (8% don’t identify as either). This falls in line with recent election results, where 48% of voters chose Hillary Clinton, and 46% picked Donald Trump.

So how did we get here? Think of a voting pool as you would a pool for insurance. When the electorate is filled with a lot of healthy, diverse ideas, everyone is better served because the costs (and needs) are better spread out. Extreme people will always be in the pool, but their voting strength will stay proportionally weak. If those healthy voices aren’t a part of the election process? You’re left with a minority of citizens who now have an incredibly lopsided amount of voting power — and they’re going to use that power to elect people with their values, not the average citizen.

Vote amplification: Where your non-vote really goes.

”Wait. Not voting directly helps extremists? How?”

Effectively, every time you decide not to vote, you’re strengthening the vote of whoever did participate in an election. Let’s call it vote amplification. Here’s a somewhat silly scenario (with math!) that’ll help us better understand this concept.

• You and two friends, Rick and Natalie, are asked where you want to go to lunch, McDonald’s or the dumpster behind a local Denny’s. Majority rules.
• You and your friends have an equal vote, so when each of you makes a choice, it will be worth one-third of the three available. Makes sense, right? One person, one vote.

That’s great! So if you and Rick choose McDonald’s, and Natalie (for whatever reason) chooses the dumpster, the entire crew will be going to McDonald’s for lunch. In this democratic choice between three friends, all parties had a say, and McDonald’s won by a decision of 2–1. Seems pretty fair, right?

But let’s consider what happens when some of you don’t cast a vote:

• You and two friends, Rick and Natalie, are asked where you want to go to lunch, McDonald’s or the dumpster behind a local Denny’s. Majority rules.
• Again, Natalie votes for the dumpster. But this time, you and Rick don’t vote at all.
• Everyone has lunch at the dumpster by a recorded vote of 1–0, with two abstentions.

Wait, what just happened there? Did that seem oddly unfair? Well, it wasn’t. The second scenario was as equally democratic as the first, but with a wildly different outcome. Knowing why is the key to understanding the real impact of low voter turnout.

• In scenario one, with 100% turnout (three out of three), each person’s vote had the same power — one.
• In scenario two, with ~33% turnout (one out of three), Natalie’s vote, despite representing a minority opinion, had vastly higher strength. It was no longer worth one—it was worth three. Why? Well, with you and Rick sitting out, Natalie’s single choice now had the strength to decide for everybody.

If that made you do a double-take, good. This was an example of what happens in every single election where you don’t vote. Did you or Rick want to go to McDonald’s? Who cares. Since you and Rick didn’t make a choice, whatever preference you had became totally irrelevant. Natalie also had a preference, and even though it was pretty disgusting, she turned hers into a vote — a vote that sent everyone to a dumpster for lunch.

Voter turnout in real life, starring Senator Unpopular: Mitch McConnell

Eating at a dumpster is a somewhat bizarre way to illustrate the consequences of low turnout, so let’s bring it all home by seeing how this works in a real-live election: The 2014 Kentucky senate race between Mitch McConnell and Alison Lundergan. Knowing what we know now, how impressive was McConnell’s 16-point win over his opponent? Here’s a hint: Not impressive at all. Let’s take a little inventory and figure out why voter apathy made his victory a hollow one:

• Mitch McConnell doesn’t really stand for much.
• Mitch McConnell has a public approval rating of around 21%, and around his reelection, it was 38% — still not great.
• Mitch McConnell lives in Kentucky, where only 26.4% of registered Republicans came to vote in the primaries (that’s just 6.5% of all eligible voters in the state, or roughly 200,000 people).
• 42% of voters came out to vote in the general election (1.7 million people out of an available 3.2).
• To secure his win, Mitch McConnell needed 1 out of every 4 eligible voters to cast a ballot for him.
• When taken as a whole, that means almost 2.4 million Kentuckians — the vast majority of their electorate — didn’t cast a ballot for the person who ended up representing them in the senate.
• Mitch McConnell is one of the most powerful people in government — and by extension, the world — and his actions affect the lives of millions of Americans.
• Mitch McConnell doesn’t have the raw electoral support to back up this huge claim to power. The amount of people who voted for him make up just 0.34 percent of the total electorate of the entire United States.

If you’re wondering, ”Was this data meant to frighten me?” the answer is: Absolutely, yes. The harsh reality is that America is a country governed by men and women who very few people actually vote for. These are people who wield an immense amount of power over 300-million citizens, yet less than 25% of the voting population wanted to give it to them. Were Kentuckians really behind Mitch McConnell? Not really. Just 24.8% of the state voted for him. How much does he really deserve all the power he has, when 2,440,513 people in his own region didn’t vote for him, and 1,811,575 didn’t vote at all? What did that 1.8 million even want? Tragically, we will never know. It sure wasn’t their senator.

If this sounds like something that might be really hurting America, well, you’re right.

Breaking the cycle.

There’s no way to really sugarcoat this: It’s a fairly huge problem when just a quarter of the population is enough to select an entire government. The real needs of Americans are being ignored because they won’t (and in many cases, can’t) speak up. Politicians can afford to be hyper-partisan right now because they know that they can win elections by simply motivating a small, but fervent base of extremists, leaving the rest of us to just deal with the consequences. The country is caught in a terrible feedback loop: We greatly dislike our government, it makes us not want to vote, and not voting creates a government that we greatly dislike. It has to stop somewhere.

So how do we do it? You guessed it.

We vote.

And not just vote, but vote with an actual purpose. Vote because where you live is worth it. Elections let a community come together as equal partners to try and solve a group problem. If you don’t vote, what are you saying about your attachment and involvement with that community? Do the people around you even matter?

If so, vote.

Take a friend or an acquaintence or a neighbor and help them vote too. Vote in every election available in your area. Vote each and every time. If you don’t, someone else will absolutely speak for you. That person isn’t you. They may not want what you want. Would you let someone else decide where your kid goes to college? What you’re going to have for dinner? Who you can love? Of course not. Then why let someone else choose who leads you? Don’t you want a say in who has power over your healthcare, your job, and whether or not your children go to war?

Then vote.

Vote because voting actually works. Your vote is a direct line to the government. Voting makes it your government. It gives you ownership of your country. Politicians may be slaves to money, but they’re even greater slaves to the vote. Without them, they have no power at all. A vote is real. It’s recorded. It decides something. It holds people accountable.

How fun is that?

Unfortunately, politicians know all of this, too. They’d much rather you stayed at home on election day. They know that the best (and easiest) way to accumulate power is to sneak past an apathetic population. But there’s one thing they haven’t been able to stop: Voting is still perfectly legal, and free elections are held every year like clockwork. Take advantage of it. You still have the opportunity to change things. Bad politicians? They aren’t a foregone conclusion.

At least, they aren’t when you decide to vote.

The question is, will you?