BLOG ON CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
One of my passions ever since I was a teenager has been government. As a teenager, I actually wrote an op-ed piece for the Rochester, New York, daily newspapers advocating reduction of the minimum voting age from 21 to 18, which happened years later.
Today, I believe strongly that we are best served as a society to the degree that all of our citizens participate in some way in helping government function better.
The first and most important way to help government function better is to vote. I believe strongly in making voting secure and having complete integrity and trust in the voting process, but, at the same time, we need to make it easier for eligible voters to register and vote. That’s why we have provided secure voting-by-mail solutions through our Relia-Vote system. That’s why I have believed that states should allow “no-excuses” voting by mail as an alternative, very much the way California offers voters the choice of either voting in person or registering to vote by mail. The states that have complete voting-by-mail systems, Washington and Oregon, have higher participation rates, on average, than other states. One could argue whether voting by mail is the cause of that or whether an already engaged citizenry in those states demands voting by mail, but I believe it has to help voter participation to add choices on how voters can exercise their right to vote.
I’ve discovered a California Institute of Technology blog that includes commentary about the effectiveness of voting by mail. A recent posting references a new study on this topic, that provides some material for debate.
The study randomly selected a group of voters that live in California’s precincts with fewer than 250 voters (and by California law, mandated to vote by mail) and compared their turnout with other California voters who had the option to vote absentee or at the polls. They found a slight decrease in turnout among those in the first group.
The authors do feel voting by mail can increase turnout (by up to 8%) in three types of elections: local, special elections, and ballot measures. They think that marginal voters being reminded of an election through the mail ballot could make a significant difference in turnout compared to these same voters in a higher profile race, with active mail, phones, TV campaigns and sophisticated “Get out the Vote” operations.
While I don’t know that I completely agree with the study’s methodology, it is credible and thoughtful.
But engagement should go beyond voting. I also answer surveys from elected officials and government agencies, because I believe that those who govern us are better served if they know what we think. I have volunteered to serve on public-private task forces for over two decades because I think business, the non-profit sector, and government, working together through engaged citizens produce better outcomes.
On Tuesday evening, October 9, I chaired a public hearing in Bridgeport, Connecticut, of the Connecticut Transportation Advisory Commission at which we heard testimony from Nancy Hadley, a former CT Deputy Commissioner. She described a program in the 1990’s in which different companies, including Pitney Bowes, adopted a government agency and helped it use best-in-class business practices to improve its operations. I thought that was an inspired idea from whoever came up with it.
I also believe that, as citizens, we should report issues to government or to private sector players performing a government-like function if we can help. I am very likely to report a traffic congestion problem to a local radio station if the station has not announced it, so that others can avoid a delay I have experienced. Back in the 1970’s, there was actually a broadly-based citizens band radio network in which motorists chatted about traffic problems with other motorists. It became a big fad at the time, even to the point that there was a number 1 hit record by a singer named C.W. McCall about CB radio users. The CB radio fad died, but the idea of sharing knowledge about traffic problems in real time is a good one.
In New Jersey, as I have commented in a previous blog, motorists can report on reckless drivers. In New York City, Mayor Bloomberg created a 311 telephone number to make it easy for citizens to report on everything from crime to potholes. In our Connecticut DOT Advisory Commission project, we have made it easy for citizens to give input on what we do relative to Connecticut DOT activities. We need to tap the wisdom of anyone who can help on any issue.
I also believe that we all benefit when we can understand public policy issues by participating in, or observing, the public business of government. Many people do not have the time or the ability to get to public hearings on issues, but with special TV channels today in many communities, they do not need to. Where I live in Southwestern Connecticut, Cablevision sets aside Channel 79 for broadcasting government hearings. At a national level, we have all benefited from having C-SPAN broadcast proceedings on many important issues.
At times, government hearings are extremely boring and tedious, but, whether we like it or not, what happens there matters a great deal to us. I recall a few years ago taking my son, who was at that time trying to get one of the citizenship merit badges for Boy Scouts, to a public hearing at our town hall. The subject of the hearing that night was the status of our high school construction project. Buried in the detail was an item about the challenges of getting the baseball field completed because of drainage issues. Later, we learned that the baseball field would not be ready when the school was completed, and that private funding would be needed to complete it. In retrospect, I wish I had gone to some of the other hearings, and had been able to tell my fellow baseball coaches a year earlier that we would need to develop a fund-raising campaign to get an adequate baseball field.
I have always lived my life with a handful of simple principles, one of which is that, if somebody is going to make a decision that profoundly affects my life or the lives of my loved ones, I not only want to know about it in advance, but I want to be at the table influencing the decision. To me, broader citizen engagement is something that everyone should find it in his or her self-interest to do, not to mention the good we do for others when we engage on public issues.
October 15th, 2007 at 5:45 pm
I believe in democracy and voting, but I refuse to vote for the lesser of two evils. I think USA needs to totally reform our political process. It seems that whoever hauls in the most money, and has the backing of corrupt political machinery, gets elected.
All the candidates seem to support lobbyist agendas and the cursed North American Union, SPP, destruction of our national sovereignty, for ultimate One World Totalitarian Government.
Why are WTO protesters called “anarchists”, yet they never interview any on MSM?
USA is falling like Roman Empire, eaten up from within.
October 24th, 2007 at 11:18 am
Hi Mike,
I enjoyed catching up and reading your blog. You raise an excellent point about the value in making secure mail voting available to Americans and how it can increase voter participation. However, in the current polarized political environment, isn’t there a danger that this can be misused? It’s possible that one party’s strategy is to adopt mail voting in states where they are likely to gain enough extra votes to win and to opppose mail voting in states where increased voting would favor the opposing party. Because the current system leaves these decisions to states, do you think there’s potential for abuse? I’m not suggesting abandoning the idea, only making a case for the importance of total adoption by all states in order to ensure fairness to all voters.
October 29th, 2007 at 11:26 am
To Lorraine:
You are absolutely correct that, because our constitution gives a great deal of power to the states to determine voting processes, there is a great ability for the dominant political party in that state to expand voting participation in a way that benefits it.
However, I believe our stance should be non-partisan. We believe that if there is a right to vote, consistent with security and integrity of the vote, our country should be making it as easy as possible to vote everywhere. Over time, our courts and our elected officials have outlawed a variety of obstacles to voting, including poll taxes, property ownership requirements, and testing processes designed to keep classes of people from voting.
The point I have made is that our country needs to recognize that there are certain voting requirements that making voting more difficult and have no reason for being. For example, many developed countries have voting on weekends. We have Tuesday elections as a vestige of an era when farmers had to travel a full day to get to a polling place, and we did not want them to travel on Sunday, a day of rest. Ironically, a designation of Tuesday was really designed to making voting more convenient for farmers. Today, it makes voting more inconvenient for the majority of our citizens.
There are other subtle problems with a one-day, face-to-face voting requirement. People often work not only during the day, but have second jobs during the evening. Polling places are exceptionally crowded outside normal working hours, at times when most people are able to vote. In some communities, parking becomes a challenge. In other urban and suburban areas, traffic congestion can become an obstacle for someone leaving work and going to a polling place.
The other problem with voting on election day is that, if a voting machine breaks down at a polling place, the recovery process, particularly at the tail end of an election day, can be a massive inconvenience to voters.
For these reasons, I favor a system similar to California’s, in which voters are given choices: voting in person or by mail. I would go further and say that the voter should be able to come in at any time within two weeks prior to the election and vote in person. We should make voting as convenient as possible for as many people as possible.
California goes one step beyond this and mandates the sending of ballots through the mail with explanatory materials. I favor giving as much information as possible to voters to help them make informed choices.
Your concern about one party gaining a temporary advantage over another because of dominance of the machinery of government in a state is valid, but that evens out over time. However, I would note that political parties do not always get what they expect. When I was in high school, I would hear that Democrats favored giving people between the ages of 18 and 21 the right to vote because they assumed most young people, being anti-war and for civil rights, would support the Democrats. They were surprised to find out that the young people who voted pretty much followed the voting patterns of the broader adult population. Moreover, candidates like Ronald Reagan attracted young people across the political spectrum.
Along these lines, one of the great books I have read recently is Mark Penn’s Microtrends. Among other insights, Mr. Penn makes two major points:
• Many stereotypes are wrong, because, within broader interest groupings, there are micro-segments that behave very differently. For example, he uses the example of Protestant Hispanics, who vote very differently from Catholic Hispanics. As time goes on, candidates will figure this out. Michael Bloomberg, whom Mr. Penn assisted in his two campaigns, figured this out.
• Lower-income and less well-educated Americans actually have a far better grasp of the issues and make better, more refined, decisions on candidates than do better-educated Americans. The idea that political parties and candidates can “control” a population of new voters may be flawed.
For these reasons, although you make a valid point, I would continue to move toward making voting easier.
– mike