Charlie,
I found this an interesting study on human behaviour...
One must ask if politicians actually want a good turnout... as it is obvious that 'civic duty' and 'democratic responsibility' are taken advantage of... in many ways.
I understand in Australia it is against the law.... if a person does not vote.
THis is an interesting article:
"Shankar Vedantam in Washington
October 28, 2008
AFTER nearly two years of political jockeying for the presidency, hundreds of millions of dollars of advertising and wall-to-wall campaign coverage in the media, nearly half of all Americans eligible to cast ballots in the presidential election may not bother to vote. Turnout for primaries, as well as local and municipal elections, often runs well below 50 per cent.
Several efforts have been made in recent years to boost voter turnout in the US, which is among the lowest in the democratic world. Campaigns run extensive registration drives and get-out-the-vote efforts aimed at supporters, and authorities have eased access to polling places and offered more flexible voting rules.
Three political scientists, however, recently discovered an extraordinarily effective way to get people to vote.
Alan Gerber, Donald Green and Christopher Larimer drew up a list of more than 180,000 voters in Michigan. One group of 99,999 voters was set aside as a control group - these people just voted as they usually do. The rest were divided into four groups.
Members of one group each received a letter 11 days before a 2006 election exhorting them to vote because it was a civic duty. Members of another received a letter saying the researchers were looking at their voting habits. "You are being studied," it said.
The third group got a letter pointing out that whether someone votes is a matter of public record - registrars maintain publicly available lists of those who show up at the polls. (Whom they vote for is a secret.) The letter went on to note whether people in the recipient's household had voted in the 2004 presidential primary and general election.
The fourth group got a letter showing not only whether they had voted in the 2004 elections but also which of their neighbours had voted. It said that after the coming election, the entire neighbourhood would receive another mailing that laid out - household by household - who had voted.
"These were the most homely pieces of direct mail in the history of direct mail," Professor Green said. "They were sheets of computer paper … They are the exact opposite of the slick four-colour mailings that campaigns send out."
Homely though they were, the letters had a powerful effect. The control group's turnout rate was slightly less than 30 per cent. Among those who received the "civic pride" letter, turnout was 6 per cent higher than the control group's. Among those who were told they were being studied, it was 12 per cent higher. Among those who were shown whether they had voted in the previous election, the turnout was 16 per cent higher.
And telling people what all their neighbours had done the previous election day, and letting them know they would be similarly informed this time around, boosted turnout by 27 per cent."
http://www.smh.com.au/news/us-election/secret-is-out-on-how-to-make-people-vote/2008/10/27/1224955951282.html
I found this an interesting study on human behaviour...
One must ask if politicians actually want a good turnout... as it is obvious that 'civic duty' and 'democratic responsibility' are taken advantage of... in many ways.
I understand in Australia it is against the law.... if a person does not vote.
THis is an interesting article:
"Shankar Vedantam in Washington
October 28, 2008
AFTER nearly two years of political jockeying for the presidency, hundreds of millions of dollars of advertising and wall-to-wall campaign coverage in the media, nearly half of all Americans eligible to cast ballots in the presidential election may not bother to vote. Turnout for primaries, as well as local and municipal elections, often runs well below 50 per cent.
Several efforts have been made in recent years to boost voter turnout in the US, which is among the lowest in the democratic world. Campaigns run extensive registration drives and get-out-the-vote efforts aimed at supporters, and authorities have eased access to polling places and offered more flexible voting rules.
Three political scientists, however, recently discovered an extraordinarily effective way to get people to vote.
Alan Gerber, Donald Green and Christopher Larimer drew up a list of more than 180,000 voters in Michigan. One group of 99,999 voters was set aside as a control group - these people just voted as they usually do. The rest were divided into four groups.
Members of one group each received a letter 11 days before a 2006 election exhorting them to vote because it was a civic duty. Members of another received a letter saying the researchers were looking at their voting habits. "You are being studied," it said.
The third group got a letter pointing out that whether someone votes is a matter of public record - registrars maintain publicly available lists of those who show up at the polls. (Whom they vote for is a secret.) The letter went on to note whether people in the recipient's household had voted in the 2004 presidential primary and general election.
The fourth group got a letter showing not only whether they had voted in the 2004 elections but also which of their neighbours had voted. It said that after the coming election, the entire neighbourhood would receive another mailing that laid out - household by household - who had voted.
"These were the most homely pieces of direct mail in the history of direct mail," Professor Green said. "They were sheets of computer paper … They are the exact opposite of the slick four-colour mailings that campaigns send out."
Homely though they were, the letters had a powerful effect. The control group's turnout rate was slightly less than 30 per cent. Among those who received the "civic pride" letter, turnout was 6 per cent higher than the control group's. Among those who were told they were being studied, it was 12 per cent higher. Among those who were shown whether they had voted in the previous election, the turnout was 16 per cent higher.
And telling people what all their neighbours had done the previous election day, and letting them know they would be similarly informed this time around, boosted turnout by 27 per cent."
http://www.smh.com.au/news/us-election/secret-is-out-on-how-to-make-people-vote/2008/10/27/1224955951282.html
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