The Voting Minority
It’s election time again, for some of us, that is. Actually, if the last presidential election is any indication, it will be election time for just under half of us. Only 49% of eligible Americans voted in 1996 – there were actually more nonvoters than voters. I guess the rest of us will be doing more important things, such as playing consumer instead of citizen.

How bad is our voter turnout? Here are the results as a percentage of US eligible voters in the last six elections:

To be fair, we should compare ourselves with the other major democracies around the world, but the results would be embarrassing. If you take our 30-some-odd percentage turnout between presidential elections, we actually have the lowest voter turnout in the world for the election of principal legislators in major democracies – Switzerland is just ahead of us at 47% and then France at 65% - the rest are in the 70s and 80s. Belgium comes in at the top at a cool 93%.

What are we not voting about? Voters scanning the issues lists will find taxes, technology, and education topping the list on George Bush’s website, and education, health care, and the economy topping Al Gore’s list. The environment as an issue comes in 6th for Bush and 10th for Gore. To his credit, only Ralph Nader lists genetically engineered foods as a relevant environmental issue.

The candidates have every reason to think Americans are more worried about issues that affect them more obviously and immediately than the environment does. So as an environmentalist, I find our low voter turnout much more disappointing than the fact that the environment is mostly a non-issue in this year’s election.

One scary thought comes to me when I compare our declining voter turnout trend to the rising stock ownership trend. Around 84 million Americans owned stock last year – about 43% of adult Americans – up from around 10% in 1965 and 20% in 1990. Are we slowly and willingly transferring our civic pride and responsibilities to private corporations?

Many environmental non-profits, without getting involved in the specifics of the campaigns, are pushing their membership to get out and vote. The League of Women Voters leads the pack this presidential election year – their challenge is to “Take a Friend to Vote.” I hope that all of us in Houston’s environmental community will accept the basic responsibility of voting this November, and I challenge each of you to go the next step: Use your organizational and personal networks to take some friends to vote with you.