Low voter turnouts can be dangerous
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.