Why Does Low Voter Turnout Threaten Democracy

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Tselmeg Ganbold Cpt. Book U.S. Government 11/4/2014 Lower Voter Turnout is a not Threat to Democracy A low national voter turnout does not threaten democracy. Democracy is the process of selecting policymakers and organizing government. It lets people speak their minds and is more richer and a lot less likely to got to war, rather than non-democracies. There used to be a time when a low voter turnout was completely normal. There are three reasons that lower voter turnout does not threaten democracy. The first reason is the strength of democracy. The second reason is hyperpluralism and its consequences. The voter’s age and ethnicity play a major role in the voter turnout, which is shown by the increase of voter turnout in presidential elections…show more content…
First of all, it was designed well enough to uphold problems such as debt, extortion and low voter turnout. Until 1870, the founding fathers agreed on three voting requirements. One had to be white, property owning and male. It meant that only a specific group of people were eligible to vote. When the constitution was written only ten to sixteen percent of the US population was eligible to vote (Beth Rowen, US Voting Rights). After comparing graphs of both the national debt and the voter turnout, it is easy to observe the fact that there is a big connection. The national debt graph shows that the gross debt was about eight trillion dollars in 1996 (Tejvan Pettinger, History of US National Debt) , when the national voter turnout in federal elections was at 96,456,345 million (Lyn Ragsdale, Voting Turnout in Presidential…show more content…
Regarding the fact that most black people in the south could not vote until 1965, when the voting rights act was passed, african americans and other ethnicities are catching up in the votes. The voter turnout numbers increased enormously after the act was passed and since then have more than doubled. It was 70,644,592 million prior to the voting rights act, four years later it increased by three million (Lyn Ragsdale, Voting Turnout in Presidential Elections). According to the Washington Post, for the 2012 election, African-Americans had three percent more eligible voters than Caucasians. Hispanics have shown improvement as well, while Asian voters decreased by ten percent. (Brad Plummer, Washington

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