Walter Dean Burnham and Thomas Ferguson examine the 2014 turnout and conclude that it was about as bad as it gets in the modern age:
The real story is much uglier: 2014 was fundamentally a democratic debacle. It likely heralds a new stage in the disintegration of the American political order.
Though Republicans jubilate now, the trend is probably as threatening to them as it is to the Democrats. The reason is stark: Increasing numbers of average Americans can no longer stomach voting for parties that only pretend to represent their interests.
So they stayed home, in quite extraordinary numbers. A full accounting of all votes cast in 2014 is still weeks, perhaps months away; it takes that long for all the returns to come in, especially in races in which incumbents faced no challenger or a recount was required. Some high stakes state elections also attract a few more voters than House contests held at the same time, which makes working off unofficial tabulations of a state’s “total vote” even trickier. But our cautious guess is that turnout in this year’s Congressional races will finally weigh in at around 36 percent of the potential electorate that had legal rights to cast a ballot.
That’s a shocking statistic. Put aside for a moment all talk of 1942 and absolute levels of turnout. Instead focus on changes in turnout between presidential elections and the next off-year election. Across the whole sweep of American history, the momentous dimensions of what has just happened stand out in bold relief. The drop off in voting turnout from the presidential election of 2012 to 2014 is the second largest of all time — 24 percentage points. Only 1942’s decline from 1940 was bigger — 29 percentage points. But then there was an excuse. Millions of Americans were hurriedly fanning out across the globe to wage total war. (World War I showed a similar pattern — turnout in the off year elections of 1918 fell 22 points from 1916’s presidential race, marking the fourth largest decline ever. Which leads naturally to the question of the third largest.
This article appears in Dec 18-24, 2014.
It seems more like people realizing that, although the names and faces may change, the story remains the same. With the Citizen’s United decision all but making our government a plutocracy, that story looks to remain the same for the foreseeable future.
At the end of the day it is a question of which party mobilizes its loyal members to get out and vote that decides the election. With over a third of voters choosing neither the Democrats or Republicans as their political home- independent voters become increasingly a deciding vote in our elections. But I won’t be surprised to learn, when the dust settles, that independents did not show up in significant number in these past midterms either. Like Ldonyo implies, in a plutocracy voting becomes largely irrelevant and voters come to understand their place – dead last.
Take a look at the Democrats (Ron Barber included) who voted for Cromnibus and threw their constituents under the bus. Yes the government is for sale and it doesn’t matter if you identify with one or the other political crime syndicates, they are essentially the same.
Our elected officials have prostituted themselves to every environmental organization, or corporate entity, that they couldn’t afford to help average citizens if they wanted to.
They have too many favors to return and paybacks to be made.
Reaction is typical. Hide your head in the sand.
And now they decide to attack the police, because it’s all they’ve got left. These officers are our friends and neighbors. Most live in the community they work in.
Please register to vote and educate yourselves on the issues. Don’t do what the networks tell you to do. Have a genuine thought.
The police officers who harass and sometimes shoot black citizens in places like Ferguson are neither friends nor neighbors of the people they are oppressing. The vast majority of Ferguson’s police force is white (more than 90 percent), and they no doubt live where the white people live. When they go into the neighborhoods where the 70 percent portion of the populace who are black live, they’re armored like soldiers and inculcated with the mentality of an occupying army. When they see young black men “jaywalking”, they don’t see a friend or a neighbor, they see an enemy, because that’s what they’re trained and socialized to see.
Attacking the institutional racism and brutality of the Ferguson police force, or the many others like it, is not a sweeping attack on all police officers. Indeed, police officers who have not lost sight of their true mission–to protect and serve–understand that and would be very happy to see the institutional racism and brutality of police forces like that of Ferguson banished forever, because as long as it persists, it not only hurts the public image of police in general, it puts them at greater risk when interacting with a populace that has understandably lost faith and trust in the institution.
Ferguson has proven not to be oppression. Some folks don’t understand the law, self defense and grand juries.
Just because you believe something, that does not make it true.