Voter turnout is generally lower at midterm elections, which lack the drama of presidential races. 'We've got to cut down on early voting because early voting is not good for us'.' It's done for one reason and one reason only. 'The Republican Party, the strategists, the consultants, they firmly believe that early voting is bad for Republican Party candidates. The former Republican Party chair in Florida, Jim Greer, told the Palm Beach Post that the point of limiting early voting is suppression of the Democratic vote. Thirty thousand of those votes would have been cast for Barack Obama. The 2012 election study showed that long lines in Florida, almost always in poorer areas, kept 49,000 people from voting. Florida, ruled by a Republican governor and Republican-dominated legislature, has fought hard to limit voting to just one day. South Carolina's Richland County, home to 14 per cent of the state's African-American voters, forced some people to wait more than five hours to vote.Įxpanding the voting period from one day to several weeks would boost turnout, but Republican-dominated states tend to restrict this. The poorer and more black a voting district is, the longer the wait time. Whites who live in nearly all-white neighbourhoods waited only seven minutes to vote in 2012. As a result employees with less control of their working lives – poorer workers who trend Democratic – find it harder to the get the polls.Īfrican-Americans waited about twice as long to vote in the 2012 election as whites – 23 minutes compared to 12 minutes, according to a study by the Brennan Center for Justice. In the US elections are held on Tuesdays rather than on weekends. Turnout is also suppressed by reducing access to polling places. Fourteen of those states already had voter ID laws, but legislators sought to make them stricter. In 2011 alone, after the Republicans won control of many states in the 2010 midterms, 34 states introduced voter ID bills to require voters show a photo ID. In 2012, Pennsylvania House Majority Leader Mike Turzai told a gathering of Republicans that their recently passed voter identification law would 'allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania.' And occasionally Republican officials obliquely acknowledge this. There is ample evidence of mass disenfranchisement though. A recent study by Justin Levitt, a professor at the Loyola University Law School, found 31 confirmed cases of voter fraud in about one billion ballots cast. Republicans generally insist that the goal of voter ID is designed to prevent fraud, but there is little evidence of voter fraud. Since the poor, young people and minorities – those less likely to have ID – tend to favour Democrats, the impact of these laws is to hold down the Democratic vote. While based in terms of voter fraud, these laws will actually have their greatest impact by limiting participation of African Americans, Latinos, Asians and the young,' said Texas Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee after the decision. 'An attack on the right to vote is under way across the country through laws designed to make it more difficult to cast a ballot. When massaging the erogenous zones of key demographics is not enough to guarantee a victory, American politicians are increasingly turning to the complimentary tactic of suppressing voting by demographics that tend to support their opponents. Ken Mehlman, Bush's The Atlantic that to do so Rove had Republicans put anti-gay initiatives and referenda on various state ballots. Rove recognised he needed to find away to energise conservatives on polling day. It was used ruthlessly by the Republican strategist Karl Rove to help George W. It is the basis of the so-called southern strategy, by which Republicans pandered to the racial fears of whites the post-civil rights south. Carroll Doherty, the head of political research of the Pew Research organisation says increasingly in America those who turn up to vote are angrier and more partisan than the broader population.ĭividing the electorate into useful constituencies is not new in American politics. This need to agitate base voters drives politicians of both parties to pander to their extremes. It is far easier to tell voters that Barack Obama wants to allow Ebola-infected terrorists to cross the unguarded southern border rather than make a case against the Democratic Party's view of the role government. Strategists are aware that the easiest way to motivate someone to make the effort to vote is to scare them or infuriate them.

Midterm house results