[Peace-discuss] Missing votes

[Bob Illyes]

There's a lot of stuff on the voting patterns
in http://www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/p20-542.pdf
This information is not yet available for 2004, but the
2000 and earlier material is quite interesting, with
discussions of such things as why registered voters
don't vote, why voters who do vote don't show up
in the final tally, etc. Voting by registered voters
tends to be very high, usually in the 85-90% range.
It was 85.5% in 2000, with the registration percent
at an all-time low, which made the 2004 turnout seem
more spectacular than it really was.

Overall African-American registration and voting percents
are close to overall white-nonhispanic. If there is a
problem here, as there seems to be, it looks like it is
predominately in getting the votes counted in the final
tally.

While reasons for not voting if registered are nicely
analyzed, I see nothing about reasons for not registering.
A huge, roughly 30%, part of those who could register do
not. They make the percent differences in the last two
elections seem irrelevant (though they're not). Does
anybody have any information on why people don't register?

Although I'm keen on tracking down voting irregularities
whether it changes the outcome or not, as a means of reducing
them in the future, I suspect it is more important toward
assuring a better election outcome next time to find out
why people didn't register and convince them that they should
and why they should, following Carol Ammons' excellent example.

Bob