Every other Tuesday, the team behind Civics 101 joins NHPR’s All Things Considered host Julia Furukawa to talk about how our democratic institutions actually work.
Voters in New Hampshire will head to the polls in just a week from now to elect our next president, governor and more. It’s part of our civic duty, but voting is not always so straightforward and people don’t always feel represented with their vote.
This week, Civics 101 host Hannah McCarthy joined Julia to talk about voting, representation and all the reasons you should vote in every election.
Transcript
When it comes to voting, how does the Constitution establish the right to vote for U.S. citizens?
Well, the Constitution doesn't really establish the right to vote, which may surprise a lot of people when they think of the 15th and the 19th and the 26th Amendments, all of which say that you cannot stop someone from voting based on race, sex and a certain age, respectively.
But ultimately, Julia, it's the states who decide who can vote in House and Senate elections. The Supreme Court, actually, in Bush v. Gore in 2000 affirmed that, and this is from the opinion, “the individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors of the president of the United States.” This is important because it lets states do a lot. It lets states restrict poll access. It allows for courts to uphold those restrictions.
So when we talk about the right to vote, which by the way, is a phrase in the Constitution, what we're really talking about is this vital form of civic participation. It's something that people have fought for over the course of our history, but it is not enshrined in the Constitution the way that people sometimes think.
Hannah, you and I have probably both heard the sentiment from people that ‘my vote doesn't matter.’ Why do some people feel that way? Is there truth to that sentiment?
I have a lot of sympathy and empathy for people who feel that way, in part because of the truth element of it, Julia. Congressional district maps are redrawn every ten years, and when they are redrawn, they can overpower or underpower certain voting demographics. We call this gerrymandering, right? If you draw a map just so, you can make it much more likely that a candidate who has the minority of the popular vote can still win in an election. It does affect how you are represented and so it affects the laws that are made about you or for you.
But I do think, Julia, it's really important to look at the actual margins of what happens in elections when it comes to voting. So I talked about Bush v. Gore earlier. That election hinged on 538 votes in Florida – a minuscule amount of votes. Really, the only guaranteed way to make sure your vote doesn't matter is to not use your vote.
You can be a bee in the bonnet of your elected officials. I really believe that that is how representation happens.
Given all these barriers to voting that voters out there face, how can we make sure that our vote means real representation?
Your daily experience is governed by elected officials who are a lot closer than Capitol Hill, right? Your governor, your state reps, [and] your school board. Local elections, in particular, have a much lower turnout, and the demographic of the voters who show up tends to be way less representative of the population of that jurisdiction of that state as a whole.
And then I think also, if we all started to think of civic participation, of voting, as this thing that we do all the time because there are elections regularly, I think that it would shift our behavior a little bit. If all you do is vote and then wash your hands of the whole business, you're just giving those officials a great deal of power, and then you're not holding them accountable. [So] calling your officials, petitioning them. You can show up to public hearings. You can be a bee in the bonnet of your elected officials. I really believe that that is how representation happens. It doesn't just stop and start in the voting booth.
