Why vote?

“What it ultimately comes down to is, the benefits of voting just don’t outweigh the costs of doing so,” says political science professor Dr. William Sabo of UNC-Asheville.

He points to the time spent getting registered in the first place and then actually going to the polls. Programs like the Motor Voter law — which lets people register to vote when getting their drivers license renewed — and No Excuses Voting — which allows voting from now until Nov. 2 in all board of elections offices —were designed to combat these time constraints that potential voters find themselves in.

“The real pressure, though, is that voters are supposed to cast a wise vote,” said Sabo.

The difficulty in finding out where candidates stand on increasingly complex issues so that one can make an informed decision takes a good deal of time and effort, said Sabo.

And political parties — which used to spend loads of time and money registering voters and making sure they knew who to vote for and when to vote — have changed their focus. Sweeping campaign reforms reduced the political spoils system and thereby reduced the incentive of the parties, according to Sabo

“The parties had incentive to win, and pulled out all stops to get people to the polls,” he said. “Their incentives were removed by reforms.”

As the parties were encouraged to take a more straight and narrow path, they had to appeal to a wider audience. Party lines got more blurred. Candidates came along who didn’t fit a party’s strict political platform. Increasingly, elections have become less a campaign of the party and more so of the individual. Straight-ticket voters are rare.

Those vague party lines are exactly what gives us such a low voter turnout compared to the rest of the world, said Dr. Gibbs Knotts of Western Carolina University. “Countries in Europe have more parties, because even a small portion of the total vote gets representation,” says Knotts.

A two-party limit

Not so in our two-party system, where plurality rules. If candidates don’t win more votes than their competition, then they don’t win anything. In Germany, though, any party receiving over 10 percent of the vote gets some type of representation. Then the ruling party must work with the smaller parties to form a coalition that can push bills through, thus empowering the smaller party.

Not only does the two-party system stifle choice, it limits the competition. Third parties have almost no chance in this system, says Sabo. He points to the inroads made by Libertarians, the Green Party and Ross Perot’s Reform Party. Their success, though, only earned scorn from Democratic and Republican candidates because it eroded part of their power base. There was no incentive to invite those parties in.

Sabo, though, said our Constitution was set up with a two-party system in mind.

“Rules in the Constitution itself guarantee a centrist two-party system. If they didn’t intend for it to be this way, then I’d have to say they were pretty ignorant of what they were doing,” said Sabo.

According to Sabo, another institution has to come forward now to make people care enough to vote again. There has been a rise in special-interest groups who do their own part for voter turnout, but their incentive is only directed towards their own candidates. Experts say groups like the National Organization of Women and the National Rifle Association encourage people to vote based on a narrow range of issues.

Other than that, all we can do is make it easier and less time-consuming, says Knotts. It is still too early to gauge the effectiveness of No Excuse Voting and Motor Voter laws, he said.

“You could do it online or by mail, but then with such mechanisms you run an increasing risk of voter fraud,” said Knotts.

O.L. Yeats is the head of the Haywood County Board of Elections and a high school teacher. He thinks educating young people about elections and getting them interested is one way to combat low voter turnout.

“It’s just not pushed in the schools,” he said.

Yeats has high hopes for the No Excuse Voting, which opened Oct. 17 and lasts until Nov. 2 at 1 p.m.

“There is just no one who can truthfully say they were too busy 24 hours a day for three weeks,” said Yeats.