Why Don’t You Vote?
If the election is so important, why is turnout so low in Washington?
As I write this, we have two more days until Washington’s ballots are due. But already, people are noticing that voter turnout in the 2024 Primary election is down—way down.
As of Friday evening, Aug. 2, turnout statewide was 15.82%. This is all voters, not just Republican voters. This is a very concerning data point, considering how unsettled things are politically nationwide, and how many pundits are telling us “this is the most important election of our lifetimes!” If this election is vitally important, why aren’t the voters voting?
What’s your excuse?
Here are some of the most common excuses regarding the process of voting: I forgot. I lost my ballot. I didn’t get my ballot. There’s too many candidates. I didn’t have time to research candidates. I didn’t know who to vote for. I couldn’t find information on the candidates. I didn’t get the voters guide. I did research, but I don’t know which sources to trust.
Then there’s the impact of the psywar, which you will remember is designed to discourage the population from taking action. Here’s some of the most common excuses for not voting caused by the psywar: My one vote won’t make a difference (it’s just one vote). My vote won’t count, because they cheat. The machines flip the votes. The auditor’s office (or secretary of state) is corrupt. The vote-by-mail system is corrupt. The post office is corrupt. The metro areas (Pierce, King, Snohomish) control the outcome, so why bother? All politicians are the same—it’s the uni-party. I hate politics. I ignore politics.
Too Many Candidates!
Remember, the point of a system is what it does. If you find yourself too confused, too overwhelmed or too discouraged to vote, maybe suppressing your vote is the whole point! Remember only the top two vote-getters make it to the November ballot. By convincing the general public to sit out the primary, this allows a relatively small percentage of the most active voters to control which candidates will appear on the ballot in November. What better way to control who makes it to the final ballot than to overwhelm and confuse the general public, who are generally too busy working and raising their families to pay close attention to politics?
For example, in this primary, we have 17 races on the ballot. Twelve races had three or more candidates, with 28 candidates in the governor’s race alone! I believe that voters want to vote for the best possible candidates, but they don’t have the time, energy and attention to research so many people and decide what’s true and false about each one. In a race with some controversy, like this year’s governor’s race, it’s impossible to sort out truth from fiction. Overwhelmed, many voters will give up and let others control the November ballot.
The Top-Two Primary empowers the powerful
The human mind is amazing and powerful but very energy intensive. Our minds like and need useful shortcuts to help us make quick and easy decisions. Categorizing things is a type of shortcut. Is that a plant or an animal? Is it a cow or a horse? Is it a mare or a stallion? With categories, we can easily navigate and understand our world.
Democrat and Republican are important political categories for our brains. Most people typically lean more towards one party than the other, so it’s very useful to know which party a candidate prefers.
Unfortunately, on our ballots, we see all kinds of made-up and imaginary party names, which make our choices even more confusing. The governor’s race includes such party names as Green Party, Independent Party, Independence Party, Nonsense Busters Party and Stand up America Party.
This isn’t freedom of choice, this is too much choice. The human mind naturally freezes, like a deer in the headlights, when confronted with too many choices. Our natural reaction is to make no choice at all.
Because there’s no discipline imposed on our primary ballot using the two major parties, the system gradually empowers the party already in power. In Washington state, that happens to be the Democratic party. We haven’t had a Republican governor since 1984. In the 20 years since the top-two primary was implemented, Republicans gradually lost every other state wide office. Having too many choices actually disenfranchised the voters. This slowly led to a concentration of power in the hands of those who were already powerful. Today Washington suffers under one-party rule.
Isolated from Good Choices
Then there’s a problem created by mail-in voting. Mail-in voting isolates the voter from community members and friends, and forces each individual to invest significant brainpower in research on each race. Instead of a community gathering, we’re all on our own.
If we went to the polls, we would run into people that we know, like and trust, and discuss the candidates with them. We could rely on our trusted friends and community members to help us fill in our knowledge gaps. The community allows us the power of distributed processing using many minds and helps us collaborate on the best choices for our community.
In a state like Washington, the primary election is actually more important than the general election. This is the election where voters choose who gets to go be on the ballot in November. But with too many candidates, too many parties, and voting in isolation the voters are not empowered, they’re lost. As a result, overwhelmed and confused voters are sitting this one out.
Did you vote? Or were you manipulated by the system to give up your primary vote? Clearly, we need to reimagine how to run our primary elections. But until that happens, you’re going to have to get your head in the game if you want to have any choices in the future.
Nancy Churchill is a writer and educator in rural eastern Washington State, and the state committeewoman for the Ferry County Republican Party. She may be reached at DangerousRhetoric@pm.me. The opinions expressed in Dangerous Rhetoric are her own. Dangerous Rhetoric is available on thinkspot, Rumble and Substack.
Sources:
1) 2024 Primary Election Ballot Return Statistics, Washington SOS, https://bit.ly/3LQPA31
2) Top Two Primary System, Ballotpedia, https://bit.ly/3WPuich
3) 2024 Primary Sample Ballot, Ferry County, Ferry County Auditor, https://bit.ly/3Yy9bga
We always vote! And we strongly exhort others to do so!
Lord, please bless our state & nation by bringing your children out to vote for righteous causes by the millions today.
We always vote (well my 20-year-old daughter doesn't), but we wait until election day to drop off our ballots. I do the research and write up notes for my husband and 25-year-old son.