Many election reforms—gerrymandering bans, ranked choice voting, proportional representation—are controversial. Winning them is a daunting prospect. But one is snoozingly uncontroversial among US voters, even while it boosts turnout more than any other change scholars have studied. That reform is election consolidation: rescheduling local elections to occur with national and state elections in even years (often referred to as “on-cycle elections”). Nationwide, researchers have found that local voter turnout generally doubles when elections move from off-cycle to on-cycle contests. That’s a remarkable finding, considering that get-out-the-vote and registration drives are lucky if they boost participation by a percentage point or two.
February 1, 2023
Another way to increase voter turnout
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What we need is compulsory ballot return laws -- laws that say you don't have to vote, but you have to put the ballot into the ballot security envelope, sign and return the envelope (whether you voted it or not). If you don't want to vote, fine, but requiring all eligible people to return their ballots, we run QC on the entire election voting machinery --
Since we spend huge sums creating and maintaining voter rolls, organizing and holding elections, printing voter guides, sending out ballots, and counting, we have every right to demand that every citizen help us ensure that the rolls are accurate and that our system for getting ballots to people eligible to vote is working.
And, although this isn't really a very big issue, compulsory ballot return would as an election fraud red flag, since the real voter returning their ballot would help us catch anyone who tried to vote for them.
We go about this all wrong - we try to change their mind and think we can do that and then persuade them to change their behavior. With social duties like voting, we should simply skip to insisting on the right behavior, and you'll find that people's minds change to match.
Our system treats voting as a privilege to be hoarded and kept away from "the wrong people" and thus people often grow up with voting as something that other people do. Adopt compulsory ballot return laws and everyone will soon consider it part of who they are and what they do.
We don't make people register to pay taxes. You pay taxes whether you want to or not. We should make voting exactly the same. ("You're of voting age? Great, here's your ballot, return it by this date. You can vote if you want while you're at it.")
Again, we're not making anyone vote if they don't want to. But we're saying that everyone has to do their part to ensure that the voting system is running right and that means everyone has to get and return a ballot envelope each election, voted or not.
John Gear
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