Opinion: Voting participation is the real issue with our electoral system
Growing up in Graham, the physical act of voting was as simple as attending the rural town’s only junior varsity football game. There was no line, no cost and anyone who wanted to, could. In the military when I voted by mail for Republican candidates from 2002 to the primaries of 2016, the county election official was an easy phone call away if I had any questions or issues. This is my real experience in Young County, but voting experience, like they say about politics, is local and varies widely.
In 2015, as a member of the Marine One detachment, I traveled to Selma, Ala., where President Obama commemorated the heroic efforts of hundreds of marchers who advocated for Black Americans’ right to vote in the face of a segregationist South that did not want them to do so. The laws on the books ostensibly did not prohibit a person from voting based on their skin color, but they did functionally, and when the laws failed or were challenged, violence ensued. Until I saw the scars of this struggle with my own eyes, the history of voter suppression seemed distant.
The struggle for voting rights came to life as I walked the streets of Selma where Confederate general and KKK member Edmund Pettus’ name still rides high on that iconic bridge. The Civil War may have ended in 1865, but 100 years later, John Lewis was taking a billy club to the head for daring to challenge a party in power that did not want Black people to vote. My eyes were opened to the narratives and maneuvering of factions working to rig the process in their favor.
Today, much has been made of election integrity, but I would argue the evidence of an abysmal participation rate tells the real story and far outweighs any evidence of irregularities in results. Low participation indicates apathy, low access or both. The fact is, we trail most of the world’s developed countries in participation rate. We rank toward the bottom of the pack when compared to younger democracies, like Australia, which averages 92 percent turnout to our 54 percent according to ElectionGuide, an international democracy advocate.
In 2020, we celebrated our turnout when almost two-thirds of eligible voters made it to the polls, our highest percentage since 1900. While we can pat ourselves on the back for exceeding our own past performance, 66 percent is not a mark to be proud of if we are to claim to be the world’s premier democracy. Instead of investigating conspiratorial reasons for an electoral loss, we ought to examine why so few people participate. Look no further than barriers to access and resulting apathy.
The brilliance of our system is supposed to be about the sacred balance of power being distributed across states, branches of government, individual voters and and elected officials. When we lose equilibrium, the institution in control wields power at everyone else’s expense. Political parties may be necessary to consolidate the will of the people, but parties are at their worst when they use power to cut folks out and are at their best when they convince people to join them.
Americans generally want our elections to be both secure and accessible to all citizens. Of course verifying the identity of each voter is important but we better work extra hard to ensure each eligible voter has a valid ID and is easily registered. Nationally, we have required every 18-year-old male to register for the draft for more than 80 years. Surely, we can also ensure everyone who turns 18 or moves to a new precinct is registered and has a valid voting ID.
In 2021, we have the technology, like digital voting efforts already underway, to increase access exponentially in the world’s premier democracy and do it securely. Almost every dollar we have to our names exists and transacts somewhere electronically. We can safely store, verify and transmit votes in the same way if we try. But party activists want us to place a myopic emphasis on security or on access at the expense of the other.
The Bloody Sunday marchers in Selma were fighting against a ruling party who sought to exclude folks within their own jurisdictions. Today, let us reject the parties and institutions who tout election integrity while excluding a slice of the electorate. Let us encourage our state leaders to wholly address our concerns in good faith rather than divide us for their own benefit.
Pitcock, a US Marine Corps veteran and member of the principled conservative organization, Principles First, is from Graham and is a small business owner in Houston.
Originally published at https://www.houstonchronicle.com on May 19, 2021.
