Half of Americans Don't Vote. What Are They Thinking?
Half of Americans Don’t Vote. What Are They Thinking?
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/02/19/knight-nonvoter-study-decoding-2020-election-wild-card-115796
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On Wednesday, the Knight Foundation released the results of “The 100 Million Project,” the largest survey of chronic nonvoters in history, and the most robust attempt ever to answer some of the questions that have long bedeviled political scientists. More than 13,000 people were polled across the country, with special emphasis on 10 battleground states, followed by in-depth focus-group conversations with thousands of them. They were asked about their political preferences, media diets, social networks, income levels, general life satisfaction, and about their demographic characteristics and social connectivity, their reasons for not voting, and their assessments of electoral and political institutions. The result is the most comprehensive survey of the politically disengaged to date, with lessons political consultants, candidates and civic educators won’t want to miss
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hris Arnade, a bond trader-turned-documentary photographer, has spent much of the past decade documenting the lives of America’s underclass, which he pulled together in his illustrated book Dignity: Seeking Respect in Back Row America. He has traveled 400,000 miles in a minivan, mostly to towns and neighborhoods outsiders avoid, meeting people in McDonald's restaurants that he says have become the social hub of many distressed communities. Almost all the people he has met, he says, are chronic nonvoters.
“These are people who are generally below the poverty line, with a lot of job turnover and family disruption, whose lives are busy living paycheck to paycheck,” he says. “You don’t really have a lot of time to watch the news or to vote, and the paperwork necessary to vote is annoying.”
“It’s justified cynicism,” he says, an entirely rational distrust of participating. “When they have engaged with the system, it kind of screwed them over. You go to the DMV to get your driver’s license and you find out you have an old speeding ticket you can’t pay. You get hurt and go to the hospital and you get a really big bill. You vote and your name will be in a file somewhere and you’re called up for jury duty. Every interaction brings hardship.”
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I know a lot of people who just don't want to be bothered with it, they like their little bubbles thank you very much. No amount of trying to convince them they have a responsibility to participate... And they have lots of kids, every one of them. Even telling them that if they are going to have all those kids, part of their responsibility to them is to vote on their behalf and in their future interests.
Too many people think like the ones who throw trash on the ground and claim it's okay because someone is paid to come an pick it up. They think all the public services they use are like that, they just appear when you need them and don't exist otherwise.
