The discussion is heating up once again in Marion County over the issue of satellite voting. Common Cause and the Indianapolis Chapter of the NAACP have filed a lawsuit against the State of Indiana and Marion County over early voting, or the lack thereof.
They say because other counties have multiple early voting opportunities and Marion County doesn’t, Marion County voters are being disenfranchised because they have to come to the City-County Building and some have to take off work to vote. Never mind the fact you have 30 days to vote, the Clerk’s office is open the two weekends before Election Day, and everyone and his mother who is a political activist is dying to help get someone to the polls.
But I digress.
While at the news conference last week, I had to laugh at the taking off work part, because one of the plaintiffs had to take off work to tell everyone he was filing a lawsuit because he had to take off work to early vote. I also asked one of the plaintiffs why she wouldn’t just request an absentee ballot and mail it in. Her response: She didn’t trust the mail. And now she’s making a federal case out of it.
I’m digressing again.
I will be the first to admit that politics does get involved in Marion County when it comes to early voting. Democrats say it increases voter participation; Republicans say it’s too expensive. Underneath it all is the question of who benefits the most. We can have the honest debate about politics, although that’s hard to do at times when people are quick to say racism is part of the reason that early satellite voting is kept out of Marion County.
Despite the best wishes of satellite voting proponents, the evidence doesn’t prove that it increases voter turnout. If anything, you just rearrange the deck chairs and individuals who would have voted anyway just do it earlier. Here’s a synopsis of the voter turnout taken from the Marion County Clerk’s website:
- 2016 General — 53 percent turnout, 18.5 percent absentee
- 2014 General — 25 percent turnout, 9 percent absentee
- 2012 General — 56 percent turnout, 16 percent absentee
- 2010 General — 36.6 percent turnout, 10.2 percent absentee
- 2008 General — 54.7 percent turnout, 24 percent absentee
- 2006 General — 33.19 percent turnout, 6 percent absentee
- 2004 General — 53.6 percent turnout, 8.4 percent absentee
As you can see, turnout tends to be pretty consistent, regardless of whether there is satellite voting.
Let’s make a comparison of the 2016 and 2008 general elections; Marion County had early satellite voting in 2008, but not in 2016. In 2008, more than 380,000 people showed up to vote; about 93,000 voted early or absentee. The overall turnout was nearly 55 percent. Fast forward eight years, the number of people who showed up to vote decreased to slightly more than 370,000, just under 69,000 voted early, and the turnout wasn’t all that different — about 53 percent. And while there has been a decrease in absentee/early voting percentages, the total voter turnout has been pretty consistent. Actually, while there was no early/satellite voting in 2012, more people showed up to vote than in the year there was early voting.
Satellite voting may make it easier for people to vote, but there’s no evidence that it increases participation. If you want to increase voter participation, get better candidates on the ballot. It shouldn’t shock anyone that the presidential election year with the lowest percentage turnout was the year there were two candidates at the top of the ticket whom no one, absent hardcore partisans, could stand.
Candidates and issues drive turnout, not early voting. What good does it do a voter to have more places to vote if they don’t like anyone on the ballot or there are no issues to get them worked up? They may as well mail it in and go about their business. The one benefit to early/satellite voting is if you don’t like either candidate, as was apparent in the last election, you can just cast your vote for the lesser of two evils and then go back to living in the real word and never worry about these clowns until Inauguration Day.
Hmmm, maybe that just might be the best reason for more early voting opportunities, after all.
Abdul-Hakim Shabazz is an attorney, political commentator and publisher of IndyPolitics.org. You can email comments to him at abdul@indypolitics.org.
