Participation
August 21st, 2012
By ddepledge
By ddepledge
The Pew Center on the States has a new interactive map that tracks voter participation over two decades.
Not surprisingly, Hawaii does not fare well, earning these distinctions:
* Hawaii had the lowest percent of eligible Americans who were registered to vote in six election cycles.
* Hawaii had the lowest percent of voted eligible Americans who had their vote counted in three of the eleven election cycles between 1990 and 2010.
Posted in In Politics | 2 Comments »
Political Radar
August 21st, 2012 at 11:56 pm
Derrick, I went to the Pew Website and then to the George Mason University site to look at their definitions. They are using what they can “Voter Eligible Population” as their basis for determining what percentage of those eligible actually turn out. BUT to arrive at the VEP, they first construct a VAP, “Voter Age Population. And in the VAP, they explicitly include military personnel. From the GMU site:
“The VAP estimates are of the resident population of the United States, which includes military and other persons living in group quarters that are not in the Current Population Survey sample frame.”
They then tweak the VAP to come up with the VEP by “adjusting the voting-age population for non-citizens and ineligible felons, depending on state law.”
They go on to say: “There are other adjustments that I am unable to made due to lack of available data, such as the number of permanently disfranchised felons, depending on state law, the number of persons who have been judged mentally incompetent by state law, and the number of persons who have moved within a state after the close of voter registration, depending on state law.”
Since they explicitly included the active duty military and (apparently) dependents in calculating the VAP and say nothing about deducting them in order to come up with the VEP, I am assuming the VEP figure is seriously inflated by the number of non-resident military and voting age military dependents.
The best estimates used by the Reapportionment Commission put the number of non-resident military personnel in Hawaii at about 48,000. Include that non-resident spouses and children over 18, and that likely means the VEP population figure is inflated by about 60,000 people, give or take.
Long story short, by adjusting the VEP by excluding non-resident military and voting age dependents, the Hawaii voting rate goes up from 40.1% to 42.8%. Not a dramatic jump, but still above the nationwide average of 41.8%.
I think if you check how the study calculated the VEP, my adjustments are in order. Again, nothing to be proud of, but “above average.”
August 22nd, 2012 at 12:10 am
The no-spin and, “quick and dirty”, and ichiban answer as to why folks in HI no vote so much is multi-explicable:
• Too lazy/too tired/too hot/no mo’ time/”you know long I going have to WAIT in d’ose fr!ckin’ lines?
• “Ah, no mattah, Democrat always ween.”
• “Shucks get [insert children's organized sport logo and or initials here: _______________________] practice today, I no’ mo’ time.”
• “Hah?!? Get election today?!?”
• “Hoaaahhh, I went to the [gym or cafeteria], they said I wasn’t registah’d.”
These are probably the same people who wonder why there are so many tax increases and why they have feed their family Spam 1/2 the week. Oh, well.