Essay On Voter Turnout In Texas

Voter Turnout in Texas In the textbook, voter turnout is described as “...the proportion of the eligible citizens who actually cast ballots-- not the proportion of those registered, but the proportion of adult citizens”(Newell et al., pg. 142). What this means is that voter turnout is not just how many people come to vote on election day, it is the percentage of people who do come out of all those who are eligible to vote in the first place. This percentage is low both in Texas and in the United States as a whole. In the article “Voter Turnout” on FairVote’s website they discuss how America’s voter turnout is low compared to other democracies who see as much as 90% voter turnout compared to our 60% average. One explanation given for this is that “...low turnout is usually attributed to political disengagement and the belief that voting for one candidate/party or another will do little to alter public policy…”(“Voter Turnout”). This means that people just do not care about politics or they feel they can have no effect on public

When Texas was allowed back into the Union they were taken over by new carpetbagger republicans who tried to change Texas and forced a new constitution upon them that they did not like or agree with. The political wishes of Texans were not represented accurately by this republican government during reform. After the time for reform had come and gone, Texans had a bad taste in their mouth for Republicans and so from then on Texas was pretty much a single-party state: Democratic. In a state with such a strong party preference, of course there will be low voter turnout. Since most citizens would vote democratic, the elections were really decided among the party itself and not during public elections. There was no reason to vote, because the citizens knew who would win: whoever the democrats brought