Kyle Bell, writing in the South Bend Voice, has some charts indicating that Indiana’s voter turnout was the lowest in the nation in a midterm election that was historically low in terms of turnout.
Indiana ranked as the worst state in voter turnout. Only 1.35 million of the 4.8 million adults eligible to vote showed up to the polls on Tuesday, giving the state a horrifically low turnout rate of just 28 percent. Turnout was even lower among the voting age population at only 26.8 percent — barely 1 in 4 adults in the state.
Dave Bangert, writing for the Lafayette Journal & Courier, suggests that the Republican success still counts as a “mandate” regardless of the turnout.
Consider this comment the morning after the election on “The Diane Rehm Show,” where a lamenting listener wanted to know if it was fair to discount the mandate Republicans were claiming because of historic low turnouts.
The panel assembled on the public radio show entertained the idea, at least long enough to do the math to suggest that, given a crummy 30 percent turnout, it took just 16 percent of the voting population to set the course for the nation, for states and for local governments. (In Tippecanoe County, turnout was right at 30 percent.)
But that’s a false proposition, akin to calling a football team’s victory something less in the standings because the stadium was 30 percent full.
A win’s a win’s a win.
I agree that a win is a win. But a win isn’t necessarily a mandate. If you view the election as a sporting event and the electorate as mere spectators, the analogy holds up. Bellyaching about the turnout is like saying the winning team still isn’t very good because they’ve only played weak opponents. But you can only play the games on the schedule. So, it’s a little unfair to criticize a win under these circumstances.
However, citizens shouldn’t be spectators in their own democracy, and I think the “mandate” question suggests a more active role by the electorate — it’s a conceit that the electorate has spoken to endorse the views of the winning candidates. In this case, there has been an acquiescence. With votes from something like 16-17% of eligible citizens, the winning candidates obviously have the right to govern; but any claim that we can discern the “will of the people” from this election is disingenuous. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. The people simply have not spoken. They stayed home instead.
It’s always a risk for politicians to
assume a mandate, given how even last Tuesday voters in many places voted for Republicans while at the same time voting for presumably Democratic-leaning policies such as marijuana legalization and minimum-wage increases. But to paraphrase Bill Parcells, you are what the scoreboard says you are. Or to quote Neil Peart, if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. Meaning that until more people show up voting Democratic (or Republican, depending on where you are), Republicans can assume they have a mandate.
It’s less like a sporting event and more like performance art where the performers interact with the audience. If you regard the tepid applause of friends and family as an invitation by the larger audience to ham up your act, you’re going to have a bad time.
re: win vs. mandate. Let us not forget that George W. Bush took his selection as President in 2000 as a mandate. On the other hand, President Obama has assumed that his big wins in both 2008 and 2012 were just that, and NOT mandates, hence spending all his political clout on trying “to work together”. So, whether just a win, or an assumed mandate, it depends on how the winner sees the result of the contest.
My guess is that the Republicans in the upcoming Congress (AND General Assembly) will definitely see their wins as mandates.
Indiana’s voter turnout rate is very low in great part due to the fact we have very inflated voter registration rolls in Indiana. Many counties have over 100% registration, while scores of other counties are over 90%. That makes turnout rates look much lower than they actually are.
I don’t know how the numbers shake out, but when discussing whether citizens are engaged and expressing their will via the polls, the relevant metric would probably be the percentage of actual voters versus eligible voters. Registration is mostly just added bureaucracy an eligible voter has to navigate to become an actual voter.
Which is why Connie Lawson is trying to purge the rolls of all those useless Democratic voters?
In the real world, the numbers from the South bend guy were based on Indiana’s voting age population, not registered voters
I also wonder how many people simply don’t vote because the result is pre-determined due to a lack of viable opponents. My suspicion is that gerrymandering or the cost of running for office against an incumbent keeps a lot of the races a “one horse show”.
+1
When I lived in Chicago, Daley claimed a mandate from receiving 70% of the vote. The 70% represented a whopping total of 12% of the total electorate. No one questioned his claims to a mandate.
Staying home is a choice. Apparently, people didn’t feel strongly enough to get to the polls. It is their right not to cast a ballot, and it sometimes communicates as much as a vote does. If the policies of the incumbent party pleased everyone, they’d get out and support them. Many incumbents won.
Most people I know, including my fellow former R staffers, think it is a mandate to govern. Not in a political sense, but a mandate to get problems solved. We probably disagree over the solutions, but we likely agree what these problems are and that they need to be addressed.
I can’t say that R leadership sees it that way. R’s lack of leadership is the reason why we keep kicking incumbents out on our side. We’ll see if the message finally sunk in.
If the registration levels are so high, as Ogden has point out, maybe that helps us understand just how cowed voters are to be sure their names are on the registration list. The low turnout may not be so much apathy as it is passive aggressive behavior and a reaction to the level of helplessness regarding our situation. Pence, Buschon, Rokita and their ilk don’t exactly comprise some sort of talent trust, and they appear to be as lacking in energy and joyless as the electorate. Patriotism is certainly not the big driver. For sure, it’s another minus for the State of Indiana.
Really hacks me off, since Pence has been nothing but a disaster for Indiana. Oh, he’s been great for Carmel and Zionsville, but his Medicaid changes alone should get him run out of town on a rail.
Then there’s the thought that low turnout is a feature, not a bug, in a system rigged by moneyed interests to get their issues addressed, voters be damned.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/princeton-experts-say-us-no-longer-democracy
My Party, my Religion, my Football Game.
More of a surrender than a mandate.
“With votes from something like 16-17% of eligible citizens, the winning candidates obviously have the right to govern”
It’s quite the opposite. With votes from 16-17% of citizens, it’s clear that you don’t have the right to rule or to seat a government or to pass laws or to try to control others. 16% of citizens is less people in the state than are NFL fans. The Colts Fan Club of Indiana has a better claim to governing legitimacy. If a competing government held elections and drew a higher turnout, which government could legitimately claim the right to rule?