Week 6- Constitutional: Political Participation

Directions: View the video below (rough transcript provided) and then take the 10-question quiz. There is no time limit and you may attempt the quiz up to two times. Your highest score will be recorded.

Talking Points

• For this week’s Weekly Constitutional, let’s talk about political participation. And let’s begin by exploring the most fundamental right and responsibility of citizenship: Voting.

• During the late 1800s, at least 70 to 80 percent of eligible voters went to the polls. Today, that number is more like 60 percent. Actually a little less. And that’s just for presidential elections! Don’t get me started on state and local contests. The rates are pathetic. So what’s the deal? Why aren’t Americans voting at respectable rates?

• There are countless explanations: little trust in government, high partisanship, waning interest in politics, barriers to voting, inconvenience, and little faith in the true value of voting.

• There is also voter fatigue: the apathy that voters feel when they are asked to vote too frequently. In the United States, there are over 500,000 elected positions, so it is likely that every week of the year there is an election taking place somewhere. That’s just too much.

• And it’s not like we have short ballots. Oh no...we vote for president, two senators, a member of the House of Representatives, a governor, a state senator, a state representative, a state attorney general, a state auditor, a state treasurer, state judges and other local officials as well, such as mayors, commissioners, school board members, etc. And don’t forget those pesky ballot initiatives and constitutional amendments! I mean, you could be in the ballot booth for 30 minutes just trying to vote for everything!  By contrast, in most European countries, citizens vote for one just member of Parliament every five years.

• Another issue is complex voter registration procedures. Let me be more specific. In all but one state, voters must go through a separate registration process before voting, and the vast majority of states do not allow Election Day registration. This two-step process -- register, then vote -- is more complicated than the process in many other countries and surely discourages some Americans from voting.

• As a result, in the United States only two-thirds of the voting-age population is registered to vote. In most European nations, registration is automatic [Shrug]

• Switching gears, let’s talk about the different types of political participators. There are a lot of different typologies of engagement. My favorite is a very simple one that identifies four different types of citizens: civic specialists, electoral specialists, dual activists, and, of course, the disengaged.

• Civic specialists are civically active. They volunteer regularly. They work with others to solve community problems. They raise money for charities. And they actively participate in groups or associations. About 16 percent of the American public falls into this category.

• Then you have electoral specialists. They always vote. They volunteer for political organizations or candidates. They try to persuade others how to vote. They display political buttons, bumper stickers, and signs. And they contribute money to a party or a candidate. About 20 percent of the American public falls into this category.

• Dual activists do all of the above! They are both civic AND electoral specialists. Only about 16 percent of the American public can be considered dual activists.

• And the disengaged...well, you guess it! They don’t really do any of the above. They are disengaged. Boo. And there are a lot of these folks. Nearly half of the public falls into this category. So, ask yourself, what kind of citizen am I? I hope the answer isn’t disengaged.

• Beyond these typologies, we can predict voting behavior by exploring a handful of demographic indicators. In other words, everything else being equal, certain types of people are more likely to vote than others. The most important of these are age and socioeconomic status.

• Older, more-educated, and wealthier individuals are, in general, more likely to vote than younger, poorer, and less-educated individuals. Church-goers participate more. Women are slightly likelier to vote than men, as are married people compared to single people. And, in recent elections, white and black voters were significantly more likely to cast a ballot than Hispanic and Asian voters.

• Alas, while Americans are indeed voting less than they should, they are participating more by campaigning, contacting government officials, working on community issues, and discussing political issues and events. The proliferation of Web 2.0 technologies has decidedly increased the frequency of political participation, although some might argue that such participation is less meaningful.

• To be sure, much attention has been given to the recent digitization of civic engagement behavior, especially among young people. Take, for instance, the Occupy movement, the outcry over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and the six million users of Change.org. This, I believe, is evidence of a new category of participatory politics that embraces new political acts such as starting an online political group, forwarding funny political videos to one’s social network, writing political blog posts, and generally engaging in political talk across multiple digital mediums.