For Love of Country:
As Americans, we champion ourselves as the pinnacle of democracy. Yet through all of this, through all of what we tout as our success, we as a people have done very little to make it happen. Voter turnouts for elections throughout the decades has fluctuated since 1960 but overall remained around 50%. Even as the number of registered voters has increased, the percent remains the same (Federal Election Commission, Infoplease). All that we can seem to do as a country is to inspire everyone as much as possible to do their part and get people excited, but it never lasts.
What is the problem? Why won't we vote? Professor Aldrich of Duke University explains that it is the result of what is called the Collective Action problem. Simply put, the more people that participate, they less worth you find your vote having and the lesser benefit you feel you will receive from voting. Additionally, as the benefit lessons, the costs that come from voting (time, gas, frustration, etc.) outweighs your perception of your vote's worth. Seems fair enough, right? But what if I told you that there was a country that turned the problem upside down. There is in fact such a country.
The voter turnout in Sweden is amazing! Why is this significant? Because Sweden for 65 years (1932-2006) has had only one major party. Only within the past decade has another party come to challenge it. Within those 60 years, voter turnout was 80% or higher, 30% higher than Americans in the same period! But why would they bother voting? If you have only one real choice on a ballot, would not you feel your vote was basically pointless? By all means you should.
Political science theory has given us a very critical equation though that may help us understand. We can gauge how meaningful it would be to vote by the equation of R=PB+D-C where R is our resulting value (positive would mean its worth it to vote, negative...it is not), P is probability that your vote will make a big difference, B is the benefits you get from voting (party favors, etc.), D is the duty you feel to your country to vote, and C being the cost to you to go to vote (gas, time, etc.). In most cases, especially America, the P and B values are very low if not null. Therefore, only the D and C is left and more often than not the D is less than the C. So how does Sweden overcome this? Basically, Sweden removes C from the equation. Sweden registers you automatically, mails your ballot, mail carriers will pick it up for you, and the ballots are extremely simplified.
So rather than try and reinvigorate the public to recognize their duty (D variable) or make it fun and exciting (B variable), they just eliminate the C value and the equation always comes out positive!
