What Causes Low Voter Turnout in the United States?

It is no secret that voter turnout is low in Texas. While people show up to presidential elections, many local elections are ignored. The “Who votes for major” (Portland State University) website shows voter turnout based on eligible voters in the recent mayor elections, some cities with big populations like Dallas and Houston have low percentages 6% for Dallas and 18% for Houston. The reason for such small turnouts is on a variety of factors like income, education, and encouragement. 

Some of the reasons for low turnouts are based on how difficult Texas makes it to vote. Texas has implied many regulations, some of which have been removed over the years. Unlike other states, Texas does not provide automatic registration and you must register a month prior to the election. Another way Texas makes it hard for it to vote is by frequently holding elections. Most of the time it confuses voters. An article by The Dallas Morning News (The Dallas Morning News #) explains how Texas suppresses votes by holding too many elections at a time like in Dallas two elections were held in one month. They even went as far as saying the elections were “watered down”. These frequent back to back elections can lead to a phenomenon known as voter fatigue. This can lead voters to feel discouraged and frustrated with the voting process. There are other socioeconomic reasons as to why it's hard to vote in Texas. Older wealthier Texans tend to have higher turnout. They tend to have more knowledge about how the voting system in Texas works. The Texas Observer (Wilder) released an article that compares the difference in the percentage of voter turnouts between wealthy and poor communities. Wealthier communities had anywhere between 70% to 99% voter turnout while poor communities had some with less than 50%. Minorities have a hard time understanding and navigating through the election process. One of the many reasons is the lack of resources and information. 

We can change the voter turnout by adding the voting and information about elections and terms to High School curriculums. This way High School seniors can have an initial understanding on how to vote. Another way would be to encourage such minorities to vote, hispanics for example make up 39% of the Texas population and according to a Pewresearch (Pew Research Center) article 64% of the hispanic registered voters in Texas identify as democrats. This is largely due because unlike republicans, democrats discuss and propose ways to improve issues of immugraiton and healthcare. If Texas could facilitate voting for the Hispanic community by providing them with the knowledge on voting in spanish or any foreign language necessary for other minorities like asians. They could also help people get registered specially elederly who might have never registered or don’t know how to fill the voting registration online. According to an online article by NCSL (National Conference of State Legislatures) a total of 20 states have implied same day voter turnout and have seen a 3% to 7% voter turnout. One of the last things would be to encourage others to vote through social media. Months prior to the presidential election of 2020 many companies and organizations began to encourage people to register and vote. Many ads that came on Youtube, through television commercials, and social media platforms began to encourage many young eligible voters to vote. One social media platform stood out from the rest when it came to encouraging young people to vote was TikTok. Though TikTok many were informed about the latest election news as well as information explaining why it was important for people to vote. NBC (Rosenblatt) even released an article called “Gen Z is using Tik Tok to encourage voter turnout in Georgia’s runoffs.” 

All hope is not lost on Texas afterall, in fact for 2020’s presidential elections, The Houston Chronicle (Wallace and Bureau) went as far as saying Texas had the best voter turnout in almost 30 years. In order to keep this up and to increase local elections turnouts Texas would need to provide accommodated help and provide information on the voting process to low income communities and to communities that consist mostly of minorities.