I read ‘How an IED got me to Vote’ and thought about how many friends that I know, that still are not voting because neither party speaks to them or they do not have the time to read up on the candidate and issues. Even with this year’s election, the one that one would think would spur everyone to get out and vote, I have close friends who still don’t know who they will vote for. It amazes me that anyone has this attitude in the U.S. after all that is going on in our country today with any one of the critical issues there are at this point in time. How could you not have some opinion and want to find candidates to vote for.
The Vanishing Voter Project was based at the Shorenstein Center at the JFK School of Government at Harvard. Through research it explored an understanding of the factors that influenced public involvement in the Presidential election process in 2000 and 2004. The study released a book in 2002 of their findings that concluded current campaign techniques had turned some citizens off that would have potentially otherwise held an interest in public affairs. Attack journalism had eroded trust and soft news had reduced levels of election coverage which in turn reduced the frequency that Americans thought about the election and the front loading of the nominating system. Electoral college strategies also tend to depress turnout in both primaries and the general election in non battleground states. These were the findings of the 2000 election in which they did 99 surveys at least once a week and collected data of 97,797 respondents from November of 1999 to January of 2001.
When I was in junior high (middle school for you young whipper snappers) and high school, the courses I really enjoyed and excelled in where history and government. While my girl friends were busy in "Home Ec." (oh barf), I took world history and honors government. As I moved along in life, busy trying to make rent and meeting Mr. Connell, my interest in closely following public affairs and government fell off. I still voted, but really did not know much about the candidate except some brief reading through a voter’s guide. Around the 2004 elections an extremely issues involved friend of mine got my interest renewed in finding out more about what was going on with our government.
The Vanishing Voter Project showed in 2004 as with the Broken Skull, author of the blog, that a large majority of both first time voters (92 percent) and repeat voters (86 percent) said that election issues was the important factor in the decision to vote. The first time voters cited not a ‘civic duty’ in the reason to vote but a personal contact of friends or family that encouraged them to vote.
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