Reasons for Declining Voter Confidence
Thank you to the Ledger-Transcript and the Monadnock Center for History and Culture for sponsoring Community Conversations. Gail Hoar’s recent columns in the Ledger-Transcript talked about the last Community Conversation, which discussed declining voter confidence in elections. Most of the statements by Moderator Runyon and former Congressman Bass emphasized the accuracy and transparency of the local voting processes. It was primarily the questions after the presentations that brought up reasons for that decline in confidence:
Restricting Voting: To those who can provide documents verifying their registration. This will exclude students who can’t use college IDs, women who have changed their names, and indigents who haven’t been able to keep the required documents.
Escalating Money: The cost of running has escalated in political races. This has shifted the balance of power from people to corporations. Corporations can invest in political campaigns to gain specific favors (like deregulation or approval for mergers) and generally this has a good return on these investments.
Moderator Runyon pointed out that the SCOTUS decision of Citizens United has changed how corporate money can be spent. Former Congressman Bass stated that many of these decisions were produced by the courts (as opposed to new legislation).
Redistricting: This is an old practice, which got the label gerrymandering in Massachusetts. It is now being pursued by both major political parties. The result is that there are fewer locations where a voter can make a difference in a federal election. Traditionally, redistricting has been done every 10 years when a new Census is completed. However, the current president asked states to redistrict very recently to ensure that the status quo continues in the House of Representatives. This is politicians choosing voters rather than voters choosing politicians.