Why don people vote?
Why Don’t People Vote? In Russia, people have fought and died in recent years to vote in multiparty elections. In many South American countries, people have thrown out military dictators so they could vote for the first time in decades. Yet in the United States, almost half those eligible don’t bother to vote. American women have been able to vote for 80 years. African-Americans have had the constitutional right to vote for 130 years. Eighteen-year-olds were granted the right to vote more than three decades ago. Today, almost every American 18 and older is eligible to vote. But many Americans don’t seem to want to take the trouble. Who Votes? Who Doesn’t? Some groups of Americans are more likely to vote than others. The most likely of all are those over 45 with a college education who earn at least $25,000 a year. The poor are less likely to vote, as are non-union blue collar workers and ethnic minorities. Women are slightly more likely to vote in federal elections than men. In the 199
Back to article Along with serving on a jury, it may be the most important thing a citizen can do: voting to choose the people who run our courts, schools, towns, counties, states, and nation. So why do a third of Americans fail to vote? The answer, says Penn State political scientist Eric Plutzer, may stem from habit: If people don’t start voting as young adults, they may never get comfortable doing so. “About 30 percent of adults are ‘habitual voters,'” Plutzer says. “They vote in presidential elections, midterm elections, school board elections. They vote even when elections are not expected to be close.” A second group—some 35 percent of us—are registered to vote. These “periodic voters” generally vote in presidential elections but may not hit the polls for other elections. A third group, also about 35 percent of adults, aren’t registered to vote. Says Plutzer, “Most young citizens aged eighteen to thirty fall into the unregistered group.” Using data from several dozen nationwide v
