Why Trust in Elections is Low

In 2016, the US had 230 million eligible voters, 200 million registered voters; yet only 136 million of them voted in that year’s election.

For a developed country, our voter turnout is remarkably low. Out of the 35 predominantly highly-developed democratic countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the U.S. placed 28.

Reason #1: Our voting technology doesn’t inspire confidence.

Infrequent federal funding and local control over polling places have rendered our current voting technology outdated and inadequate.

Approximately 60 percent of ballots cast in the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election were paper-based, with 56 percent counted by optical scan ballots, and four percent counted by hand.

The fact is our aging US voting infrastructure is having a seriously negative impact on voter confidence.

In 2016, only 66 percent of Americans polled by Gallup reported being either “very” or “somewhat confident” that vote casting and tabulating would be conducted accurately.

More concerning, another 2016 survey discovered one in three voters had concerns about the accuracy of voting technology used at their polling location.

Which technologies concerned them?

Hard to say, but 86 percent of those who used electronic voting machines said they believed they were the most secure.

This preference for electronic voting machines makes sense. We’re deep in the information age; we send secure emails without hesitation; hail a ride-sharing car (and pay for it) in an instant; so why can’t we vote on these same devices?

It stands to reason that those who have poor experiences voting at their polling location will be less likely to trust those systems, and, more importantly, less likely to return.

Reason #2: Not everyone can make it to their assigned polling locations.

Roughly one-third of the US population are eligible nonvoters.

The reasons for their lack of participation are far-ranging: disillusionment with major candidates, feeling that they’re votes don’t matter, the corrosive impact of money in politics — the list goes on.

However, for a non-trivial portion of the population, their greatest challenge lies in getting to the polls one Tuesday in early November.

After the 2014 election, 45 percent of nonvoting respondents to a survey reported reasons including, scheduling issues (specific to work or school), missing the registration deadline, or not having adequate transportation.

That’s tens of millions of US citizens not represented simply because our voting infrastructure is unaccommodating.

Even on top of these already steep challenges, economic factors further make in-person voting inaccessible.

Since election day is not a registered holiday, many have limited time to get to the polls. And because polling places are funded at a local level, and assigned to voters geographically, voters in poorer neighborhoods are more likely to face discouragingly long lines. What’s more, residents of these neighborhoods are more likely to receive their income on an hourly basis, lending an even higher cost to their time investment.

The solution is agonizingly simple: let people vote in their homes, securely, on their own time.

Period.

New age of voter participation.

The crisis of low voter participation rises above that of inconvenience, rigidity, and technological faith. It’s robs a large swath of the population from being heard.

And the longer it goes on, the harder it’ll be to get their trust back.