Dallas election — 6 percent voted

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  • December 20, 2017 at 7:13 pm #79239
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    “…Voter turnout in local elections is a national scandal — not only is it dismal, it’s declining. Across the country, less than 15 percent of eligible people vote in local elections. In Dallas’s 2015 elections, only 6 percent of those who could vote for mayor did; their median age was 62. Compare that with the UK’s 69 percent turnout rate in its most recent local elections, or France’s turnout rate of 64 percent.

    Low turnout isn’t an accident: it’s the intended result of state laws that schedule city elections in off-years and off-months. One California study, which found that “an alarmingly small percentage of California residents decides” local elections, concluded that “about half the difference in voter turnout across California cities can be traced to a single factor — election timing.” And there’s nothing new about this: “The manipulation of election timing was a regular feature of political party strategy in the nineteenth century,” concludes a study by Stanford political scientist Sarah Anzia. “At the dawn of mass political party organization, as restrictions on white male suffrage crumbled and party elites sought patronage to build their organizations, election timing manipulation emerged as one way to exert some control over the electorate.”…see link
    Jacobin:https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/12/voting-rights-gerrymandering-democratic-party

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