{"id":14686,"date":"2015-02-10T06:56:09","date_gmt":"2015-02-10T14:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=14686"},"modified":"2015-02-10T06:56:09","modified_gmt":"2015-02-10T14:56:09","slug":"how-to-increase-voter-turnout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2015\/02\/10\/how-to-increase-voter-turnout\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Increase Voter Turnout"},"content":{"rendered":"

I won\u2019t even try to count how many times I\u2019ve complained about low voter turnout, so when a saw an article purporting to have ways to increase voter turnout, I could not resist sharing it with you.  However I do disagree with the author on one key point.<\/font><\/p>\n

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\"0210Vote\"Voter turnout in the U.S. during the last midterm election hit the lowest point<\/a> since the 1940s. The number of Americans heading to the polls each election has been declining for the last fifty years and lawmakers have recently been pushing<\/a> efforts to keep even more people away from the polls.<\/p>\n

People do not exercise their right to vote for various reasons<\/a>, some of which are easier to solve than others. According to a U.S. Census report<\/a> from 2013, 14 percent of nonvoting respondents were unable to participate because of an illness or disability, 8.6 percent were out of town, 12.7 percent did not like the candidates or campaign issues and almost 19 percent were too busy. Some people cannot take time off from work on a Tuesday in November, which has led lawmakers including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to call for making Election Day a federal holiday<\/a>. Others may not feel engaged in politics or informed enough to vote, while 5.85 million U.S. citizens<\/a> are prohibited from voting due to a felony conviction on their records. <\/p>\n

Voting advocates, including those who spoke at the Elections and Voting Summit<\/a> last week, have been developing and pushing for new ways to get more people to the polls. Unlike laws that restrict access through voter ID laws, shorter registration and early voting periods and disenfranchising felons, these proposals are likely to have support from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle<\/strong> and would not be difficult to implement to get voters to turn out in higher numbers\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Think Progress<\/a>><\/p>\n

Click through for the list of ideas.<\/font><\/p>\n

My disagreement is with the author\u2019s statement that these ideas would have bipartisan support.  Republicans may give lip service to such ideas at conferences, but in real life, Republicans are doing everything they can to disenfranchise legitimate voters.<\/font><\/p>\n

I still think one of the best ways to increase voter turnout is to adopt Oregon\u2019s vote by mail system.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I won\u2019t even try to count how many times I\u2019ve complained about low voter turnout, so when a saw an article purporting to have ways to increase voter turnout, I could not resist sharing it with you.  However I do disagree with the author on one key point. Voter turnout in the U.S. during the […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14686\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}