Prop 1 election turnout low, U.S. voter turnouts rank near the bottom

Voter turnout for Tuesday’s special election on Proposal 1 was a little higher than expected, 24.9 percent across Michigan, but still fairly miserable given all the attention the sales tax plan received and the fact that the subject at hand – roads – is about as universal as any issue the electorate will ever decide.

But those numbers are par for the course, in Michigan and across the U.S.

The Independent Voters Network reports that a Pew Research Center survey of 34 developed countries revealed bad news for the state of democracy in the United States. When compared with the countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the U.S. placed 31st in voter turnout, behind Slovenia. Turnout was calculated based on the estimated voting-age population from the 2012 general election.
Pew found:

“U.S. turnout in 2012 was 53.6%, based on 129.1 million votes cast for president and an estimated voting-age population of just under 241 million people. Among OECD countries, the highest turnout rates were in Belgium (87.2%), Turkey (86.4%) and Sweden (82.6%). Switzerland consistently has the lowest turnout, with just 40% of the voting-age population casting ballots in the 2011 federal legislative elections, the most recent.”

A calculation of U.S. voter turnout based solely on voters who are already registered would disguise the underlying issue of lagging voter participation, according to IVN. If one were to exclude non-registered voters, U.S. turnout in 2012 would be 84.3% of registered voters, but this hides the fact that nearly half of the eligible voting-age population didn’t participate.