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September 13, 2004
Women not voting much
Lisa-Jean Mugler
Mesa Legend
In the 2000 election, there were 16 million women voters of all ages who were unmarried and unregistered. There were six million women who were registered, but did not vote. Both numbers total 22 million nonvoting women.
The Women’s Voices Women Vote website states 62 percent of all women ages 18 to 25 don’t vote; 46 percent of all unmarried women are of voting age, yet only 22 percent of them are registered, and regularly vote, meaning approximately three-fourths of the female population does not vote.
According to the Chicks Rock, Chicks Vote website, not many unmarried women think that either Bush or Kerry address important “female topics” such as prevention of violence and sexual assault, women’s health issues, access to affordable child care, and equal pay for equal work.
Another concern is evidenced by the fact that although Gore won the popular vote, Bush is now the president, winning the election by 537 votes. Some have concluded that one’s vote won’t matter; the election will just turn out how those “in charge” want it to be.
MCC Political Science professor, Brian Dille, explained the Electoral College. According to Dille, the Electoral College is what the founding fathers set up, allowing the citizens to choose representatives who vote for the appropriate candidate, without risking a “mob rule” democracy. Each state is apportioned a number of votes, based on the population it has. So, the larger a population in a state, the more votes it has. In 2000, California had a population of 33 million, and received 45 votes; while Arizona, with a population of five million, had 10 (receiving two more votes because of the 2000 Census).
After presidential candidates are chosen to represent their party, they travel to New York, California, Florida, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania to deliver speeches, since those states have the most electoral votes. The candidates “stump” those states, trying to appeal to the largest blocs of voters. Each candidate attempts to be the most efficient in garnering the highest number of electoral votes especially from those high-vote states.
When the election is held, each individual state tallies the votes of its citizens. The larger the number of people the candidate gets to vote for him, the more likely he will “win the state”. Then, the votes are assigned a percentage of representation by the Secretary of State. For example, if one candidate, gets 60 percent of the vote, then the Secretary will use 60 percent of that state’s electoral votes for that candidate.
Most importantly, when the majority of the population votes, representation is more closely aligned to what the population desires, no matter whether it is a national, state, or even a local city council election. True, urban areas have the advantage of more people and thus potentially more votes, but large blocs of voters, with the same goals across the nation, could conceivably alter the outcome.
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