USA Presidential Elections

In a representative democracy, it is incumbent upon and is the civic duty of all citizens to get involved. Voting-aged citizens can get involved by going to their polling places and voting on election day. Citizens get to express their public-policy preferences through voting. Political elections only occur several times over the course of the four-year Presidential election cycle. On election day, I do not think that citizens would be sacrificing too much to set aside, say, 30 minutes from their busy schedules to go to their polling place and voting.

In order to vote, USA voting-age citizens must take two crucial steps:

1. They must register to vote.
2. They actually must go to their polling places and vote on election day—if not voting by mail.

There is no excuse for not registering to vote. It is far easier to register to vote than it is to, say, complete a school form, apply for a credit card, apply for a job, apply for a bank account, apply for an automobile loan, apply to rent an apartment, and so forth. In other words, if you can complete the department of motor vehicles' form to obtain a photo ID, then you can find the time to go vote.

Equally, there is no excuse for not voting. It takes far less time to vote than it takes to, say, go to school, go to work, go to the movies, go to the mall, go to the grocery store, go to the bakery, go to the gas station, go to a restaurant, and so forth. In other words, if you can find the time to wait in line to purchase some fast food or if you can find the time to wait in line to use the ATM machine, then you can find the time to go vote.

As of November 2012, according to the USA Census Bureau, the USA's population was estimated to be roughly 314,877,116 residents. Of those 315 million residents, 235,248,000 were 18 years old and older. Of the 235 million residents who were 18 years old and older, 215,081,000 were deemed to be citizens who were eligible to vote. For the November 2012 Presidential election, 71% (or 153,157,000) of voting-age (215,081,000) USA citizens had registered to vote. From those 71% registered voters (153,157,000), 62% (or 132,948,000) of them actually voted in the 2012 Presidential election. To summarize, upward to 61,924,000 voting-age USA citizens did not bother to register to vote. Of the registered voters, upward to 20,209,000 did not bother to vote. One way to interpret the 62% voter participation rate is to surmise that, generally speaking, USA residents are content with the direction the nation is moving and therefore do not feel the need to vote (that is, the glass-half-full perspective). Another way to interpret the 62% voter participation rate is to surmise that a fairly large chunk of USA voters are apathetic or simply do not care about the direction the nation is moving (that is, the glass-half-empty perspective).

To be sure, according to the USA Census Bureau, the following reasons were given by those who did not vote in the 2012 USA Presidential election:

• Too busy, conflicting schedule, 18.9%
• Not interested, 15.7%
• Illness or disability, 14.0%
• Did not like candidates or campaign issues, 12.7%
• Other reason, 11.1%
• Out of town, 8.6%
• Registration problems, 5,5%
• Forgot to vote, 3.9%
• Transportation problems, 3.3%
• Don't know or refused, 3.0%
• Inconvenient polling place, 2.7%
• Bad weather conditions, 0.8%

Eligible voters between the ages of 18 and 24 years old are the ones who are least likely to vote; they posted a 38% participation rate in the 2012 Presidential election. Eligible voters between the ages of 65 and 74 are most likely to vote; they posted a 71% participation rate in the 2012 Presidential election. As for an explanation of these differences in voter participation by age, it could be that the younger voters tend to be preoccupied with other curricular and extracurricular pursuits and, therefore, would tend to place a lower priority on voting. On the other hand, older voters might have more leisure time available on hand and do not mind spending some of their leisure time going to their polling place to vote—or do not mind taking the time to vote by mail.

The above November 2012 voting statistics can be viewed at the following web link:

Quite possibly, in time, these November 2012 voting statistics will be removed from the Census Bureau's website as these statistics will be replaced by November 2016's election data.

Some additional election and voting resources include the following links: