Having recently read a great book called Why Politics Matters by Gerry Stoker, I came to realize why it is so critical to get voting and other forms of citizen engagement right. Without a secure, convenient, reliable voting system and without broad-based citizen participation in some way in the decisions affecting a group of citizens, it is very difficult for elected officials to govern. Their legitimacy would be consistently questioned.

The major question Stoker tackles in his book is why, with all the many ways in which citizens can interact with government today, with the tremendous increase in two-way communications, with higher “responsiveness” by elected officials to citizen demands than ever, citizens today are dissatisfied and alienated from elected officials in democracies than ever before. They have less confidence in their elected officials than ever before.

This is not a phenomenon confined to one country, one political party, one type of leadership, and one set of economic and political circumstances. There is a remarkable uniformity in the intensity and the level of growth in dissatisfaction. Why?

• In some countries like the United States, a relatively small percentage of the electorate votes, compared with others. To fix this problem, voting needs to be more convenient, voters need to be provided with better information about their choices, and they need to feel that their vote can make a difference. If elections are largely uncontested, or if the successful candidate consistently wins and represents a point of view opposite that of the voter, then the voter will not feel that he or she can make a difference.

• The voting process needs to be secure, to be managed with integrity, and to be perceived as representing the will of the people. As mentioned in The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law blog, a more secure process and better data is “vital to both research and reform in the area of election administration.”

• Between elections, citizens need to feel that they understand what is happening and have the ability to register their views individually, or as part of an affected group, and make a difference in the outcome of a decision. The NonProfit Voter Engagement Network blog, recently cited the value of personal contacts and non-traditional methods to engage under-represented voters.

• Voters need to feel that if one candidate or party wins, the candidate or the party will represent all citizens, not just those who supported them.

Looking at the U.S. system today, how does it fail to meet these requirements?

• Our elections are generally held on Tuesdays, for reasons that go back to when we were an agricultural society and farmers needed to travel for a day to get to the polling place. Having an election on a single day and having it on a work day no longer makes sense. It would cost more money to let voters be able to vote over a several-day period as they do in Texas, and it obviously would cost more to have polling places open on the weekends, but voting is so important that expanding the time that citizens can vote is a worthy use of our tax dollars.

• Every citizen should have the ability to register as a “no excuses” absentee voter, as California residents can. We should allow every voter to have a choice between voting in person and voting by mail, as is the case in California. The Montana Netroots blog further examines this topic by suggesting the implementation of prepaid return postage for mail-in ballots.

• There should be a requirement that paper ballots, supplemented by explanatory material about candidates’ positions and issues subject to referenda, be available online and be mailed to every citizen for every election.

• As a provider of a secure voting-by-mail solution, Relia-Vote™, we are well aware of the criticality of a secure voting system. We support the philosophy embedded in the Help America Vote Act to upgrade both the in-person and the mail voting systems to enhance security.

• Beyond the actual election process, we need to address the issue of redistricting. Today, too few elections are contested at the federal and state levels. While we have insured that Congressional and state legislative districts are designed to be of relatively equal size, the reality is that the vast majority of legislative elections afford voters no meaningful choice.

• Between elections, citizens need to be offered a meaningful opportunity to be engaged on issues of immediate and critical importance to them. In Connecticut, Jim Amann, Speaker of the General Assembly and a very thoughtful, practical political leader, invited me to participate in a health care symposium at which ordinary citizens could participate. There were many innovative and sophisticated ideas for health care reform that elected officials may not have heard otherwise. The Transportation Advisory Commission which Governor Rell asked me to chair set up a web site which has been used by citizens to give us feedback on Connecticut DOT. We have received letters from citizens and organizations, and have also had numerous public hearings and one-on-one interviews to get as much public feedback as possible. On the topic of online initiatives, I found a story on a Lawrence University blog about the College’s creation of a new Web site – MyElectionDecision.org – designed to encourage more voter participation and educate potential voters on issues relevant to them. These types of initiatives should help to increase engagement, particularly among younger voters.

Ultimately, democracies are successful to the degree that citizens feel that elected and appointed government officials listen and respond to them. Regardless of the formal processes in place, citizens respond to being treated with respect and deference. When we look at emerging democracies around the world, the formal processes can be put into place more easily so that elected officials can develop the skills of having a productive, continuous dialogue with citizens.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 13th, 2007 at 1:45 pm and is filed under Citizen Engagement, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.