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Low voter turnouts can be dangerous

by Pat Williams
| December 1, 2010 1:00 AM

 

For a century Montana’s voters turned

out in record-high Election Day numbers. Throughout the 1900s

Montanan’s streamed to the polling places; our percentage of voters

was always among the top five states in the nation, with

Massachusetts and Minnesota usually leading the way.

Eleven times Montanans broke above 80

percent turnout with the highest occurring in 1952, 1960 and

1964.

Those were the presidential election

years of Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson, with turnout reaching

toward an astonishing 90 percent.

That has changed. In four of our most

recent seven general elections, Montana turnout has plummeted below

60 percent and this year voter turnout reached a near-record low of

only 56 percent.

The results of low turnouts are almost

always the same: candidates on the political fringe win.

This year victories went to the most

conservative of the Republican candidates.

The most recent post-election research

found that this year 203,429 Montanans cast their votes for

Republican candidates to the Montana House of Representatives.

Thus, only 31 percent of Montana’s

registered voters determined 68 percent of Montana House seats.

That represents a record for minority control of our state

legislature.

Montana witnessed an incredible 26

percent drop in voter turnout. In both Missoula and Great Falls,

the decline was almost 40 percent.

Throughout the state, most of those who

stayed home were Democrats.

That made all the difference in

razor-thin margins in Lake, Flathead, Lewis and Clark counties as

well as on the Native American reservations.

Why was Republican turnout so much

higher than that of the Democrats? Of course, the bad economy was

part of it, but the Republican voter turnout apparatus was also far

better funded and considerably more sophisticated.

Republicans hired a Colorado direct

mail and marketing company, Wilard Direct, which scoured the

personal data of Montanans in a successful effort to identify

“persuadable” conservative voters.

The company sorted through individual

hunting licenses, magazine subscriptions and voting records of many

thousands of Montanans and, the company claims, got 75 percent of

them to the polls.

Despite that effort, one wonders if the

recent low overall turnout phenomenon is responsible for not only

minority rule in Montana but also our seemingly schizophrenic

national voting patterns.

America’s voters have been lurching

from landslide to landslide.

During this decade, we have witnessed

two back-to-back presidential election sweeps, one by George W.

Bush in 2004 and the other by Barack Obama in 2008.

Voters have voted in landslide

proportions for congressional Republicans in 1992 and for Democrats

in both 2006 and 2008.

This year voters switched again and

overwhelmingly elected Republicans to the U.S. House and

Senate.

We seem uncertain and vacillating; a

voting public searching in vain for the magic savior.

Perhaps two reasons account for our

Election Day scrambling. For 30 years Americans have been

encouraged, by some, to believe that the two political parties are

peas in a pod — no difference between them.

We have also been told that elected

officials are not to be trusted.

We all seem to be affected by the

“Tiger Woods syndrome”: who and what can we trust?

Too many of our priests and ministers,

our banks and other once-trusted institutions have disappointed

us.

The only place where we can directly

express our outrage is in the voting booth. Thus, it is the

candidates who disproportionately feel our wrath.

Is it any wonder that following 30

years of incessant anti-government rhetoric from many Democrats and

virtually every Republican, the American people have either stopped

going to the polls on Election Day or, once there, have cast a too

often thoughtless ballot to simply “throw the rascals out.”

Neither political party nor our

government are well served by this cabal.

Low voter turnouts and lack of

reasonable stability in our political choices are dangerous for

America both here at home and certainly abroad.

 

Williams served nine terms as a U.S.

Representative from Montana. After his retirement, he returned to

Montana and is teaching at the University of Montana.