Turning out
Electoral Commission chief executive Helena Catt has called for citizenship education in schools, in an effort to halt the decline in turnout in our general elections. This year’s election had an 80% turnout, which was up slightly from the 77% in 2002 - our lowest turnout in a century.
Globally, we do quite well when it comes to turnout. A league table produced by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) in 1998, which averaged the turnout in all post-World War II elections in each country in the world, found we did sixth-best: after Italy, Cambodia, Seychelles, Iceland and Indonesia.
IDEA also provides some interesting factoids on factors that influence turnout:
- Proportional representation voting systems (like MMP), on average, get a higher turnout than plurality-majority systems (like FPP).
- Countries with high literacy rates get a higher turnout.
- Countries with populations between 100,000 and 1 million get the highest turnout.
- Countries with the highest ratings on the Human Development Index get the highest turnout.
- Countries in which the largest party tends to get less than 50% get higher turnouts than countries in which the largest party tends to get more than 50%.
Anyway, the Greens have long argued for a greater level of citizenship education in schools. As Dr Catt says: voting is a habit, and it’s very important that young people get into this habit at their first election. If they don’t, our turnout will just continue to decline, and our democracy will be accordingly damaged. Perhaps this is another issue for that post-election select committee inquiry?
September 30th, 2005 at 10:38 am
My kids had some ‘citizenship’ eduction this year, centring on the election. My nine year old son was required to answer questions I didn’t know the answers to, like how many parliaments we’ve had. I don’t know how much they got out of it at 8 and 9 information-wise, but they were at least interested.
Not so happy that I couldn’t tell them who the government was on Sunday morning…
September 30th, 2005 at 10:39 am
frog, do you know of any correlation between voter turnout and the prevalance of economic neoliberalism?
September 30th, 2005 at 11:01 am
80% sucks.
Who didn’t vote? I predict the young people.
Why didn’t they vote? Easy, because the politicians didn’t inspire them.
Too much mud-slinging, bribe-like promises (with our own money!), stupid game playing, and not enough dealing with the issues.
What did the Greens talk about? Plumbing, school lunches, cow poo, cannabis, smacking, and the price of petrol.
All important stuff, but not exactly inspiring and energising.
What’s more, we were so cosy with Labour, that we didn’t look like we would fight for the planet.
Teaching civics in schools won’t change this - the US have that and look how low their turnout is.
We have to inspire them to vote, and we have to start now.
September 30th, 2005 at 11:39 am
Inspiration, really? How do you know this rÄ?peti? The anecdotal evidence I have from friends and other acquaintances suggests that it’s powerlessness that stops people from voting. Which is hardly surprising given the fact that our system is so far away from devolving real power to those affected by decisions.
September 30th, 2005 at 11:47 am
to halt the decline, my idea is e-democracy - more public comments threads and surveys and polls on political party/MP websites.
rÄ?peti - when did the Greens talk about cannabis or cow poo? I was unaware of any campaigning that was done around these issues. We also talked about student debt, renewable energy, clean rivers, minimum wages, child allowances, free wellness checkups/preventative health …
September 30th, 2005 at 12:53 pm
Christiaan:
Yeah I would agree with you that economic neoliberalism has a rather disempowering effect. In turn, this can cause/lead to disenfranchisement.
After all, in many countries, the power of governments/the State has been superseded by that of transnational corporation, who are unaccountable to the citizenry and whose decisions etc. the voting public have no say in determining.
September 30th, 2005 at 12:56 pm
Christiaan, yes powerlessness is part of it for some people, but during the campaign I kept meeting well-off educated people aged 20-35ish who told me they had NEVER voted because “all politicians were the same”, “politics just doesn’t interest me”, and “politicians don’t say anything that I can relate to”.
So, Stuey, check out the timing:
19th July 2005 Nandor’s Misuse of Drugs (Cannabis Infringement) Amendment Bill launched
24th July 2005 First day hoardings could go up (so everyone was in campaign mode).
Even if it wasn’t an official campaign topic, the timing was so close that large numbers of people assumed that it was (you wouldn’t believe how many people grilled me about it).
As for cows:
“Further growth of dairying should only be allowed to happen if there is a serious reversal in the trend that wherever there are additional cows, there is lower water quality,� said Jeanette (8th December 2004)
Yes, we talked about all those things you list. The real question is: did anyone listen?
September 30th, 2005 at 3:24 pm
“the Greens have long argued for a greater level of citizenship education in schools.”
Our curriculum keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Be explicit about what you plan to take out if you plan to put something else in - because unless you’re making the school day longer, _something_ will get squeezed.
Also teaching civics (like the Americans do) just does not work. The US has the strongest civics-education setup in the world, and some of the worst figures for participation in democracy (as a % of population US citizens don’t vote, don’t join political parties, don’t get out and get involved).
It’s like the US model of trying to give kids bigger vocabularies by making them learn lists of words. It fails dismally. You’re much better off encouraging kids to read more and trusting that they’ll learn vocab themselves.
Likewise you’re better off encouraging engagement in society, and encouraging kids to take an interest in politics. Give them the interest, and they will pick up the knowledge themselves. Trying to do it the other way around just does not work.
Pick local issues that they care about (hey, some city council’s playgrounds are being upgraded, and the local one isn’t - why not? when will it be? who decides? how could you influence it?). Get them interested in the topic in ways they care about, and they’ll fill in the knowledge themselves, start local and they’ll build up from there. But if you try to force ‘citizenship education’ at them at an abstract/national level (”What is the political role of the governor general?”) and they will just turn off.
September 30th, 2005 at 3:56 pm
On that note, people could do worse than read this book:
http://www.demos.co.uk/catalogue/startwithpeople/
which attempts to address some UK concerns about declining public engagement with political processes.
September 30th, 2005 at 6:45 pm
Another thing that works is giving children empowering experiences, and allowing them to see the causality between action and result; we’ve had local groups campaigning for skate parks, surf reefs, and against motorways and coastal destruction, with corresponding amounts of flow-on to larger city and national issues.
Treat children well, listen to their ideas and they will grow up into adults who can articulate what they want, and why, and how to acheive that.
Too much of our society is about enclosing children in marginal experiences, in making the parents responsible for everything the child does/experiences, so that children grow into teenagers without any sense of autonomy or responsibility. Then they go to work, and find that teachers are replaced by autocratic employers, there’s no union to support employees rights, and anyway, they’ve never heard of unions since the ECA kicked in….
It’s no wonder that people under 30 are so dispirited and apathetic. their upbringing has conditioned them to be miserably apolitical, and they expect to just struggle along trying to pay their way.
I contrast our political apathy with France, where teens study political science from 12 - 16 at lycees, and by the time they vote at 18 have a reasonable idea where the political views of their parents, their peers and their society have come from. They have a very rational social model, teenagers who drink alcohol without committing automotive homicide/suicide, and family friendly working conditions.
That the French are predominantly governed by socialists suggests something about the domination of NZ politics by centrist interests in both of the major parties; there is no real opportunity for alternatives to be tried here, because the government and the opposition are really only squabbling over the same few metres square of centre ground.
Until there is any real “point of difference” in the political branding, the participation rates will not change, because 20% of the population really doesn’t see much benefit or harm coming to them from either governing option….
Roll on the Revolution, anybody?
September 30th, 2005 at 8:05 pm
Japan’s Lower House elections were held six days before ours.
Voting age: 20
Turnout: 67.5% (up from 59.9 in 2003)
In Germany, elections were the day after ours.
Voting age: 18
Turnout: 77.7% (down from 79.1% in 2002)
September 30th, 2005 at 9:43 pm
More conspiracy theories from the left:
‘After all, in many countries, the power of governments/the State has been superseded by that of transnational corporation, who are unaccountable to the citizenry and whose decisions etc. the voting public have no say in determining.”
–> care to provide some evidence for this rathern citing leftish dogma that’s just not based on the facts?
Also I suspect it would be incredibly hard to find a casual relationship bewteen ‘neo-liberalism’ (whatever you say it is) and ‘disenfranchisement’ (again, whatever you say that is).
October 1st, 2005 at 8:49 am
Americans don’t vote because they believe, correctly, that their votes are without real power to change government. They don’t vote because people with power take away voting machines. They don’t vote because the only vote that counts is the casting vote in the Supreme Court. They don’t vote because they know that the corporations and the wealthy control things and they DO NOT HAVE A REAL CHOICE.
This was the Nader battle cry and it IS true. However, FPP systems as perverse as that in the USA, with polarization as great as in the US, leads to 2 party systems with neither party fielding decent candidates. The goal is to defeat the candidate you like the least, and you vote as you must to achieve even that… and ignoring that, as Nader and the US Greens did in 2000 leads to disaster.
respectfully
BJ
October 1st, 2005 at 10:56 am
Just to throw in a completely different curve, how much do people think our participation rates would go down if elections here were held on, say, a Tuesday?
October 1st, 2005 at 12:44 pm
Ghet
Damnit I have to apologize because I completely left out the fact that election day is not a holiday, IS a Tuesday and people have to go to work. You are absolutely right.
respectfully
BJ
October 1st, 2005 at 2:37 pm
Chris:
The facts are all there for you to read/view in ‘The Corporation’ by Joel Bakan, both on paperback and on film.
The facts are too numerous for me to list here, but feel free to pretend those facts don’t exist by not picking up the book/watching the film. You are, after all, a free individual.
But for your benefit, just consider this:
* Some multinational corporations are worth more than the GDP of some countries - mandate, perhaps, to throw your weight around?
* The WTO and IMF dictate policies to - and sometime even change the policies of - democratically-elected governments.
* Multinational corporations and the business lobby have a huge influence on the WTO.
* Corporations are answerable to no-one but their shareholders; governments on the other hand are answerable to the entire citizenry - REGARDLESS of whether the people voted for them (or even voted at all).
* The public has no say in the policies of, and decisions made by, multinational corporations - even though these may well affect their lives.
However, once again, feel free to ignore these fact.
“In corporations we trust?” - Hell no.