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Tax Credit for Voters | |||||||||||||||||
I think our democracy would greatly benefit from a Tax Credit for Voters. Enfranchise all voters overnight. Create a voting habit. Force political campaigns to address the concerns of all voters, not just likely voters. A somewhat similar idea was proposed on this site, under "Improved Voting", called "Pay People to Vote" but paying people to do something feels quite different from providing an incentive and reward for certain preferred behavior. Any good federal tax cut should, like this one, encourage behavior to benefit society in an area where there is otherwise little benefit to the individual. Those who are currently active participants as voters or in political campaigns may find it hard to accept, but many people focus on two choices on Election Day--one is whether voting takes priority over work and family, and the second is whom to vote for. Many are consumers who want candidates not only to motivate them to vote for them, but also to motivate them to vote at all. People who don't vote may feel their vote won't count in a race important to them--polls may show lopsided support for one or another presidential or other important candidate in their state; or they may feel battered by conflicting last-minute ads and rationalize that their nonvoting is a protest against the system (even though no one will take notice of or understand such a "protest"); or they may just feel disconnected from politics, from government, from history, and rest their sights only on family, work, and friends, letting government "take care of itself." A biennial tax credit for voters would change all that. Knowing they were going to vote, people would listen more, read more, and ask more questions, in order to decide how to vote. Many of us have seen during jury duty how people of every walk of life rise impressively to their responsibilities in the jury box. By and large, the same happens in the voting booth. Perhaps most significantly, the candidates will have to address their discussions, proposals and promises to everyone, since every voter will be a "likely voter." If people can collect 50-cent toll receipts all year to get a small tax deduction, it's easy to guess that they will respond happily to a voter tax credit. Clearly a deduction would not work in this case because it would favor only those who pay taxes. A credit would not only deduct from the tax of those who owe but would also result in a check for those who file but don't earn enough to owe taxes. Bush was elected by 27% of eligible voters. This low percentage damages both the credibility of the election and the international standing of our President. Let's do something about it, and let every voice be heard. After the 2002 elections, in a pique, I actually made a website about this: http://www.taxcreditforvoters.us but did not establish any organization to promote it. I am only suggesting the idea and would like to see support build on its merits before further efforts are undertaken. Chellie Pingree of Common Cause liked the idea enough to propose it to her board but they chose not to pursue it at the time. What do you think?
esp, Jun 01 2004
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At first glance this seems like a good idea if one accepts two key assumptions in your argument. First you are assuming that it is better to have everyone vote rather than only those who are the most motivated. I certainly would agree that voting should be made as convenient as possible (balanced against accuracy and security concerns of course). However, it may be worth consider that a small time-cost is beneficial to the process of capturing the will of the people. Not voting in the face of a small time-cost might be interpretted as an expression of near-indifference. Also when instituting a measure to make voting more attractive, it is important to consider how the measure will affect different groups. A flat tax credit will favorably affect groups with low cost of time (i.e. low wages). Perhaps this a good thing, if you believe that this group, in general, faces barriers to voting which high-wage earners do not. But that would have to be demonstrated -- especially since it is high time cost citizens which you presume to be at a current disadvantage.
Second you assume that a citizen knowing before-hand they will vote will have incentive to become better-informed. You say, "Knowing they were going to vote, people would listen more, read more, and ask more questions, in order to decide how to vote. Many of us have seen during jury duty how people of every walk of life rise impressively to their responsibilities in the jury box." I do not think the analogy to jury duty is so obvious. Perhaps it would happen as you say. On the other hand, we could simply end up with millions more voters who turn out in order to collect their payment and who are largely influenced by the last minute raw emotion tugging election advertising.
Our goal should be full participation. Fretting about which voters are "motivated enough" to vote, and whether they are capable of thinking clearly in the voting booth, is self-defeating for a democracy, not to mention patronizing. I think lower-income people are mostly the ones who feel sidelined by politicians, so benefitting them would have a clear impact on the population of voters, and correspondingly, on the campaign promises and proposals. Higher income voters also balance whether their time is worth a single vote. I know people who have been too busy to vote but rationalized their position as some kind of protest.
You have to be careful about likening voting to free markets, as you do implicitly--as if it's a test of the market to make candidates motivate people not only to vote for them, but to vote at all. Markets are not free, when you throw in the effects of advertising dollars, government (incumbent) powers and the like.
It's questionable that voting is a "small time-cost" for many people, and I see no point in testing people's motivation to vote. All our energy should go into the voter's choices, not the voting itself.
I wrote against the idea of paying people to vote but the two ideas are really identical so this is just a copy of that comment.
There is already a consequence to not voting. It's not being able to have a say in the result. Think more carefully about the consequences of paying for voting (no matter where the payment goes) and you will discover that in the end (if the method is 100% successful) everyone will get $50 from the government to vote but that everyone will pay more than $50 to finance the operation. The reason is that the taxpayer will also have to pay to support the infrastructure that will need to be set up to keep track of who votes, write checks or credits to everyone who votes, track down voter fraud, oversee departments of people who do these jobs, pay rent on buildings for offices for these people, etc.
On the other hand, this money could have gone to pay for more computers, windows, buildings, fountains, boots, clothing, jewlery, and a million other private sector items that would bring up the quality of our lives but instead you would force me to choose instead to pay everyone on my street to vote.
Giving money to the government is the least efficient way to spend your money in my mind, why do people have this love of having the government spend their money? If you have too much money, go ahead and send it to me and I'll send you a picture of what I did with it which is better than what you will get from the government.
Two objections:1) Voting has no societal benefit -- one candidate wins either way2) Voters who are not inherently interested in the vote are less likely to be informed and more likely to be swayed by propaganda--I'd prefer that they don't vote.