Bloomberg won with 18%

Andrew Friedman

Bloomberg won with 18%

That's 18% of registered voters, not eligible voters. In fact, in yesterday's New York Times, Sam Roberts wrote that Bloomberg received 20,000 fewer votes than he had when he ran in 2001.

Now, don't get me wrong. Bloomberg's margin of victory was impressive. Nonetheless, what does it say about our democracy that so many eligible voters chose not to participate in the election. Maybe these voters didn't much like either Bloomberg or Ferrer, maybe they felt comfortable that Bloomberg would win even without their vote, maybe they're apathetic.

While we'll never know exactly why voter participation was so low, we should all agree that low participation threatens to undermine the democratic concept of majority rule.

At City Council Committee meetings, or at meetings of the full City Council, a quorum is needed before a vote can be taken. The basic premise seems to be that in order for a vote to be legitimate, a majority of eligible participants must actually participate. We should establish similar expectations for elections.

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Posted at 7:10 AM, Nov 14, 2005 in Democracy
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Comments

Now as someone whose been paying attention to the dmiblog. I'd hazard to guess that one of the reasons turn out was so low was because we vote on Tuesday, a work day. Unlike every other country in the civilized world which makes it a holiday and actually encourages people to vote in a way that isn't hypocritical.

Of course, giving people an extra day off is not the American way (American workers work more hours now than they ever have before) so it seems the least we can expect from our puritan culture to give us a whole weekend to vote within.

right?

So lemme ask you this grassyrootsy - why Tuesday?

Yeah thats just it-- voting on Tuesday makes no sense unless your goal is to depress voter turnout (and I think thats often the goal of many incumbants).

I like the Why Tuesday? group. Glad to see that article ran in the Washington Post.

For all the talk that's done about how great it is that we're over in Iraq granting the people there the right to vote, it's somewhat interesting that we don't do much here to encourage people to vote. Sure there are ads telling people to vote and what have you but the bottom line is that it's difficult for many people to find the time to vote. Sure there are many people that are apathetic - it will never be easy to get those people to vote, but that doesn't mean that if we give people the day off that voter turnout won't go up. Companies might have a huge issue with having to pay people to take off and vote (that's even if they do) but it'd be a start.

I didn't vote because I had to work from 9:30 am to 10pm. And if you think I am going to get up early to vote for either Bloomberg or Ferrer, think again.