Portal:Politics/Selected article/2006, week 28

Voters lining up outside a Baghdad polling station during the 2005 Iraqi election

Voter turnout is a measure of the percentage of eligible voters who cast a ballot in an election. Almost all political scientists feel that high turnout is desirable in a democracy, but there is much debate over the factors that affect turnout. Different countries have very different average voter turnouts: for example, turnouts in the United States are typically more than 40 percentage points below those in Malta, which also does not have compulsory voting, and Australia, which does. These differences are believed to be caused by a mix of cultural and institutional factors. After increasing for many decades, there has been a trend of decreasing voter turnout in most established democracies since the 1960s. This issue has been much studied, but scholars are divided on what has caused it, with a wide array of economic, demographic, technological, cultural, and institutional factors proposed as the cause of this decline. There have been many efforts to increase turnout and encourage voting. (read more...)