I Vote Therefore I am

Although most Harvard students probably couldn’t tell you why, today is a very important day for Massachusetts politics. Today is the state primary election, when voters will pick the Democratic candidate for governor who will compete against Republican W. Mitt Romney in November. For Democrats, who make up the vast majority of Massachusetts voters and a vaster majority of Cambridge and Harvard voters, this is the chance to pick the next governor.

And yet probably fewer than 50 percent of registered Massachusetts Democrats will vote today. Among those, students will make up a tiny fraction of the electorate, and Harvard students an even smaller number. Most students don’t bother to register in the state where they attend school, and only a small number of people who are registered in another state go to the trouble of sending absentee ballots.

Voting is the only way to participate directly in democracy. If you don’t vote, you don’t count, and you don’t exist as far as politicians are concerned. For instance, imagine the effect Harvard students would have on local elections if we all registered in Cambridge! Suddenly, the city council would have to care about Harvard College rather than just Vice President for Government, Community, and Public Affairs Alan J. Stone.

Of course, Harvard is no different from the rest of the nation; less than one in five Americans between 18 and 24 voted in 1998, with numbers even lower in primary and local elections. In order to allow more people to have their voices heard, the government ought to make drastic improvements to the voting process.

The first obvious move is for Congress to pass the election reform legislation that has been sitting, almost dead, in a conference committee because the House and the Senate can’t agree on identification requirements for voters. The solution, at least in the short term, is to strike the amendments regarding identification and worry about that later, passing the crucial legislation which will make voting procedures smoother this fall.

Already we’ve seen that reform is gruelingly slow. In Florida last week, the Democratic primary election was so close that former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno still has not conceded the election, although final vote recounts are due today. In a near replay of 2000, Miami-Dade and Broward counties saw major problems in counting ballots, and the margin was only about 5,000 votes in 1.3 million. This happened after polls were kept open an additional two hours because of massive lines, and many polling places were inoperative or malfunctioning for part of the day. There is no question that these problems are hurting the democratic system, and they should have been fixed, with federal money, after the last election. Yet the reform bill continues to sit in Congress with little hope of being passed.

Nevertheless, even if these reforms are passed and voting becomes smooth and easy in Florida, the issue of low voter turnout still cripples our democracy. Especially among young people and minorities, voter turnout is abysmal. In the last midterm election, eligible voter turnout hit an all-time low of 36.4 percent.

To reverse this trend, the government should make voting more convenient, and—if necessary—create incentives for voters. If people can find time to buy food, get gas, go to the doctor and read the paper, they should have time to vote. There are a number of ways to make voting easier and more desirable: online voting, phone voting and voting rebates.

The first and most obvious step is to allow voters to register and vote online. The Internet is the fastest and cheapest way to collect votes, and it is available to most Americans in schools, homes, offices and public libraries. Best of all, with the Internet, people can vote from anywhere in the country, eliminating the need for absentee ballots. More Harvard students vote for the Undergraduate Council than vote in city, state and national elections, even though—sorry if I’m biased—the council has much, much less impact on our daily lives than the government does.

In March 2000, the Arizona Democratic Party experimented with online voting through election.com and had a 600 percent rise in voting, with rises of up to 1,000 percent in heavily Hispanic districts. The system was very convenient—it was secure, provided instant returns and minimal rejected ballots.

Some people rightly worry that online voting is unfair to people who don’t have access to or don’t know how to use the Internet. For these people, free phone voting and traditional polling place voting should be available. Phone voting would be done with an automated system and an 800 number, using simple PIN or social security number identification.

With these changes, there would be a huge rise in voter turnout. Once developed, the cost to the government to use I-voting and phone voting would be a fraction of the cost of traditional methods.

Of course, there are other, more costly methods to attract voters, although they would be less politically feasible. One option is to make Election Day a national holiday so people would have time to go to the polls. Another option is to pay voters a “vote rebate” of $10 at the polls to create an incentive to vote. If 200 million people voted in a national election, it would cost the federal government $2 billion every four years, or $5 billion per decade. While that may seem like a lot, it is a small price to pay to improve our democracy and make sure every voice is heard. And it pales in comparison to the $1.3 trillion tax cut the Bush Administration is phasing in over the next decade.

This November, every pundit will be talking about causes and effects of voter apathy and malfunctioning machines in Florida. Let’s not jump on that bandwagon; let’s eliminate it by reforming the system. Get out and vote today, because otherwise, as far as Beacon Hill is concerned, you don’t exist.

Nicholas F.B. Smyth ’05, a Crimson editor, is a government concentrator in Dunster House.