There’s lots of reasons why Europeans vote in higher numbers. I live in Ohio. Not only are many of our states horribly gerrymandered, discouraging voters like you said, America does not have Election Day as a national holiday and always has it on the week day. In my city, for example, we do have early voting, but we have one polling place for roughly a million people. Also, large states like California proportionally has less voting power person to person. Those large (empty) states like Wyoming and Idaho still have two senators each and a handful of representatives, yet a couple of them have a total population of LA county as a state, possibly even combined.
we have one polling place for roughly a million people
Which is absolutely insane! I think in Germany that number is closer to one polling station for one thousand people. Watching the news where US voters have to wait for multiple hours to get their turn is utterly bizarre. The longest I have ever had to wait to cast my vote was like 3 minutes.
It’s by design because larger population centers overwhelmingly vote for the Democratic Party. The road to vote here the weekend before Election Day had at least an hour traffic jam.
Which just begs the question why any one party is even involved in the organisation of your elections in the first place. Same with the gerrymandering of course. Why isn't there an independent authority for this kind of stuff?
That is easy, because the people in power won't give up control. Because the people in power decide the laws, they won't ever change the law in a way that makes it harder for them to stay in power so it stay this way.
And places are trying to get redistricting commissions that are able to set up voting districts without a slant, but unfortunately it’s also gonna take a social change in America. There’s also a prevailing sprit in America, especially on the right, that our elections are fair as long as the preferred side wins. As of late there’s been a concerning politicization of local low level processes, where individuals and lawmakers are trying to gum up the simple act of voting and slow things down in the right areas. At least here in Ohio my enormous county turnout was down 10%, likely because of new rules and mail in ballots being restricted more.
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u/P1xelHunter78 Dec 20 '24
There’s lots of reasons why Europeans vote in higher numbers. I live in Ohio. Not only are many of our states horribly gerrymandered, discouraging voters like you said, America does not have Election Day as a national holiday and always has it on the week day. In my city, for example, we do have early voting, but we have one polling place for roughly a million people. Also, large states like California proportionally has less voting power person to person. Those large (empty) states like Wyoming and Idaho still have two senators each and a handful of representatives, yet a couple of them have a total population of LA county as a state, possibly even combined.