Here’s a little experiment you can try at home. Invite three of your friends for coffee or beer and, while the four of you are sitting around the table, try to figure out which one of you voted in the recent primary election.
Only one of you voted. Actually, it was fewer than one of you.
A scant 24% of voting-eligible Wyomingites took the time to cast their ballot in America’s Great Experiment in democracy. That mathematically changes the concept of “one person, one vote” into “one person, four votes.”
How that fact strikes you says a lot about how our population is behaving as the United States approaches its 250th birthday.
Some folks might be aghast that fewer and fewer of us are making decisions for the rest of us in the Big Empty. They might realize that a consolidation of political power in the hands of a small percentage of the citizenry is not quite what our Founders had in mind.
Those folks will accept their civic responsibility to vote, will encourage their neighbors to do likewise and will work to make voting easier for everyone eligible.
And there are some folks who are just fine and dandy with that circumstance. They might calculate that, as long as that small fraction of voters agrees with their worldview, the fewer votes cast the better. After all, when you are trying to impose your politics on a state or a nation, any political opposition represents an unwelcome hindrance.
Those folks will try to make it harder for anyone who disagrees with them to vote. They’ll put up roadblocks anywhere they can, and they’ll discourage participation by anyone who doesn’t think like they do.
As I see it, that’s what happened in the recent primary in Wyoming, and it’s a fair analysis of what led up to that dismal voter turnout.
Much post-primary pontificating ensued, with the blame being placed on a blizzard of nasty mailers, gnarly candidate rhetoric and a deep dissatisfaction with the status quo. People also mentioned cringe-worthy national politics spilling over Wyoming’s borders.
But the upshot is that too many Wyoming citizens shunned the voting booth and were content to allow too few Wyoming citizens to make decisions for them. THAT, to me, is the most troubling fact to emerge from the primary.
If less than a quarter of Wyoming’s citizenry is taking the reins of the state, then they are becoming the “elite” that they so vociferously disparage.
All this begs the question, “What can be done to increase voter turnout?”
Here are some ideas.
In the 4th Century B.C. Athens – the birthplace of democracy – a guy named Draco was in charge. Draco decreed that voting was mandatory. If an eligible Athenian didn’t vote, they were exiled for 10 years. I like that idea, but it might be a tad “Draconian” to work in Wyoming.
If so, there are other steps Wyoming can take.
For instance, politicians can stop caterwauling about the four instances of voter fraud that have occurred in Wyoming this millennium. Instead, they can focus on the millions of valid votes that have been cast in the Cowboy State during that time and stop trying to pinch down everyone’s franchise.
Wyoming can go through its election code with a meat cleaver or chainsaw instead of a scalpel and remove any impediment to greater voter turnout.
We can even consider automatically registering eligible voters when they acquire a Wyoming driver’s license or resident hunting or fishing license. Maybe even when they pay property tax on a primary residence within our borders.
There are lotsa ways to skin that cat, if we want the cat skinned. But, unless we want to see democracy continue to be diminished by a rising “nouveaux elite,” we need to do something to increase voter turnout.
Rod Miller can be reached at: RodsMillerWyo@yahoo.com
