...Idaho, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Wyoming. Congress should mandate Election Day registration nationally.

I'd bet that the Republican 72-hour program and the Amway-stuff probably wasn't superior to our GOTV operations by much, if at all. What was clearly superior was their messaging to drive up base turnout, with going nuclear on gay marriage and equally nuclear on John Kerry serving as essential factors

I'm starting to focus on the one area where the GOP does much more than Democrats: robo-calls. The GOP robo-calls with negative messaging to an extent far beyond the Democrats, and with far more emotionally-charged messages, as well. You notice in all the hype about the GOP turn-out, they never mention robo-calls (not a surprise) ... but they have ramped up that activity considerably.

Frankly, I think this is an area that is getting far too little attention ...

Their GOTV is overrated.  From 2000 to 2004, Dems did better in the key states where all the GOTV effort was than in they did in the rest of the country.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/10/30 /102834/32

The GOP GOTV operation is twofold. It not only identifies and contacts potential GOP voters, it also spends a lot of money firing them up with attacks on and demonization of the Democrats.

RE: The negative advertising

I did a study for a class about 4 years ago and found that while it was mostly a zero-sum game with negative ads, when there WAS an effect, negative ads motivated the supporters of the person being attacked. It was very much an attitude of "How dare they unfairly slander our guy! I'll show them!"

Still it was at most 3-4 points so barely a statistical blip.

The entire GOTV campaign is a lot of hype. They make it seem like the GOP is dragging people to the poles. This year is clearly different.  People are going to vote on emotion and the desire for change. Also the negative ads only in my opinion motivate the base. Blacks in Tennesse after seeing the two stupid ads  should be more motivated then ever to turn out.

Even then, over the course of several elections, Americans have more chances to participate and their turnout may be higher than that in countries where people vote only once every five years.

Which countries are those, though? The UK has elections at least every two years. And including primaries is cheating a bit, because the vast majority of primaries have only nominal opposition.

I'll grant that Americans in general can vote for more positions than Europeans. But I'll also suggest that a few of those positions -- secretary of state, or any position involving oversight of elections -- shouldn't be decided by voters in the first place.

After decades of trailing turnout in the United Kingdom, U.S. turnout in 2004 was on a par with recent British elections, in which turnout was 59.4 percent in 2001 and 61.4 percent in 2005.

Oh, that's cheating too with the cutoff: the turnout in those years was lower because there was really no prospect of Labour being defeated by a weak opposition. The turnout in 1997 was 71%, and that was the lowest since 1935. Expect the next one, post-Blair, to be up in the 70s, while 2008 won't come close.

Anyway, those wiggles aside, my approach to improve turnout would be proactive registration. That is, creating mechanisms to automatically register people when they establish residence with the criteria that make them eligible. Background checks are already permitted to strike felons off the roll in states where the prohibition exists -- a prohibition I despise -- so why not put people on the roll and send their voting cards automatically?

Off topic, but significant, IMHO-

"Bloggers are leading the conversation," said David Bohrman, CNN's Washington bureau chief. "You could argue that most of the political dialogue in this country is happening online, so if you don't incorporate that into your coverage, you're missing a major element."

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/new s/cl-et-news30oct30,1,4936146.story?coll =la-headlines-entnews&ctrack=1&c set=true

Thanks for the Do More Than Vote link! It's the best.

Actually, the list for jury duty is take from several places, including the DMV - more often than not you're asked to serve b/c of your driver's license/state id card

This is pretty poorly argued. Most of the things said here depend on using the single data point of the 2004 presidential election to try to refute longer-running trends-- and one could very easily argue 2004 was not an average election. For example, his response to Myth #1 leans pretty hard on the high turnout in 2004. If 2004 was the first election in decades to live up to voter turnout levels of the 1960s, this has no bearing on the problem that turnout in the elections in between those two has been lower. Not all elections will be as dramatic as 2004 was, or even 1992.

Similarly, his response to Myth #3-- in which he tries to refute the idea negative ads hurt turnout by pointing to that one single instance of effective negative campaigning in 2004-- is just laughable; among other things he is attacking a straw man here, since the argument he's supposed to be trying to refute is that while negative ads may whip up emotions in the short term, they turn people off to the political process in the long term. His point might have been stronger if he'd concentrated on the "some academic studies" supposedly suggesting negative ads increase turnout, but he doesn't tell us what these studies were or how to find out more about them.

Myth #2 he doesn't even try to refute-- he just admits it's true, but offers a lame excuse for why it's true. Well, okay, but it's still true.

And Myth #4... I'm not sure why that qualifies as a "myth" exactly, since the way he stated the myth ("The Republican 72-hour campaign will win the election"), I don't think anyone sincerely believes that it's true except Karl Rove. "Myth" implies that it's something widely believed and accepted. It probably is widely accepted that, as you put it, Republicans have a better GOTV engine than Democrats; but if this is a "myth" neither he nor you do anything to dispel it. His only meaningful response to the idea of a better Republican GOTV engine existing is "well, Democrats are trying harder this time than they did last time". Okay, and?

Part #5 is the only coherent or well-supported part of the article.

This article isn't so much mythbusting as making random assertions.

"5. Increased voter registration does not necessarily mean increased voter turnout, but Election Day registration probably does: Sizable increases in turnout can be seen in states with Election Day registration, which allows people to register when they vote. This may be related to the fact that lots of people don't make up their minds to vote until Election Day, rather than months in advance when they get a license." This may or may not be the relevant way to frame voter registration. What VR does, unquestionably, is allow voters who want to vote actually vote. If you aren't registered you aren't casting a ballot no matter what. VR may not increase the turnout in an election (which is the percentage of eligible voters who cast a ballot), but it DOES increase the total number of voters casting ballots. VR isn't so much a turnout vehicle as it is a vehicle for increasing the electorate. To the extent that progressives can register core progressive constituencies, then they have expanded the electorate in a progressive direction. Getting those people to vote, even if it is just 50% turnout means that there is an overal increase in the number of progressive voters in an election. Also on this: "Studies of a campaign's personal contact with voters through phone calls, door-to-door solicitation and the like find that it does have some positive effect on turnout. But people vote for many reasons other than meeting a campaign worker, such as the issues, the closeness of the election and the candidates' likeability. Further, these studies focus on get-out-the-vote drives in low-turnout elections, when contacts from other campaigns and outside groups are minimal. We don't know what the effects of mobilization drives are in highly competitive races in which people are bombarded by media stories, television ads and direct mail." Atually, there was a series of GOTV studies done on the 2005 NJ Gov. race and while they should not be considered the definitive GOTV answers, they DO show that teh face-to-face contacts people get are still a significant factor in turnout even with TV and direct mail from numerous sources. The most important thing is a face-to-face contact on the Monday before Election Day. There are, of course, more detials involved in this and I've simplifeid somewhat, but the results are statistically signigicant. I don't blame the professor for not knowing this since the study was done privately and the results are still confidential.

Here's how this was supposed to look: "5. Increased voter registration does not necessarily mean increased voter turnout, but Election Day registration probably does: Sizable increases in turnout can be seen in states with Election Day registration, which allows people to register when they vote. This may be related to the fact that lots of people don't make up their minds to vote until Election Day, rather than months in advance when they get a license." This may or may not be the relevant way to frame voter registration. What VR does, unquestionably, is allow voters who want to vote actually vote. If you aren't registered you aren't casting a ballot no matter what. VR may not increase the turnout in an election (which is the percentage of eligible voters who cast a ballot), but it DOES increase the total number of voters casting ballots. VR isn't so much a turnout vehicle as it is a vehicle for increasing the electorate. To the extent that progressives can register core progressive constituencies, then they have expanded the electorate in a progressive direction. Getting those people to vote, even if it is just 50% turnout means that there is an overal increase in the number of progressive voters in an election. Also on this: "Studies of a campaign's personal contact with voters through phone calls, door-to-door solicitation and the like find that it does have some positive effect on turnout. But people vote for many reasons other than meeting a campaign worker, such as the issues, the closeness of the election and the candidates' likeability. Further, these studies focus on get-out-the-vote drives in low-turnout elections, when contacts from other campaigns and outside groups are minimal. We don't know what the effects of mobilization drives are in highly competitive races in which people are bombarded by media stories, television ads and direct mail." Atually, there was a series of GOTV studies done on the 2005 NJ Gov. race and while they should not be considered the definitive GOTV answers, they DO show that teh face-to-face contacts people get are still a significant factor in turnout even with TV and direct mail from numerous sources. The most important thing is a face-to-face contact on the Monday before Election Day. There are, of course, more detials involved in this and I've simplifeid somewhat, but the results are statistically signigicant. I don't blame the professor for not knowing this since the study was done privately and the results are still confidential.

Purposely not voting is a form of free speech. You can't force people to vote for people they don't support (and millions of Americans do not support ANY party).

Well, if the 72 hour campaign is a myth, why are we so desperate to emulate it?

That reminds me of what they say about judicial verdicts. Even if you can't decipher it, look at the dissents. That will clear things up in a hurry. It's also the way I figure out the wordy ballot measures. I check the argument for and against in the sample ballot. When one side spreads fear that the measure, if passed, will benefit trial lawyers and raise taxes, they've already handicapped the issue for me. Pass it. Next.

Look, this is a classic case of reinforcement and selective acceptance. The netroots has an ongoing desperation to embrace negative campaigning and pretend Republican GOTV is overstated. So when there are tidbits to support that, those are the ones highlighted. Next.

My dad volunteered for GOTV in a major South Florida precinct in 2004, about two weeks before election day. Zero experience. A week later he was canvass leader, head of the entire operation. The guy who had the position quit in disgust because it was so disorganized, with inferior computers and outdated lists. My dad said he would walk up to homes and occasionaly the current residents would literally laugh at him when he asked their name, since that person wasn't even the prior resident. The Democratic lists were so flawed they weren't catching the current generation. This was in one of the two pivotal states. I'm confident it is far superior now but two friends of mine who work Republican GOTV told me they started months earlier than normal this year with even more advanced techniques. Not that I can get more specifics out of them. Possibly it's a bluff but I can verify those two guys are not showing up at our weekly pickup basketball game, supposedly to work GOTV.

Democrats still don't have enough of a continuous application of GOTV. It's like the old days when NFL teams ended the season in December then basically didn't work out or show up until the following July.

Last month I posted my comprehensive plan to increase voter turnout here.

Silent sound makes a lot of good points.  The 60% turnout in 2004 was anomalous; the US hadn't seen it that high since 1968--before 18 year olds were given the vote.  Turnout was 51% in 2000, 49% in 1996 (lowest since 1924), 55% in 1992 (Perot spike), and about 52% in 1988.  While the US was setting a 40 year high for voter turnout with its 40% in 2004, Canada hit a record low of 61% the month before.  This January it was back up to 65%.  In a territorial eleciton in Yukon earlier this month, turnout was down to 72%.  Turnout in European countries is typically in the 70s and 80s.

Yes, I'm sympathetic to the arguments that Americans have too many elections and elect too many offices.  I've suggested that both of those be reduced.  Ohio REALLY doesn't need to be electing County Coroners--is that really a partisan/ideological position to begin with??  The Jacksonian tradition went a little too far in some cases.  And there are too many possible election dates in each place every year.  Missouri has 4-5 dates per year available for various elections.  I think the feds should limit the states to 2-3 per year.  Fewer election dates would be easier to keep track of and more likely to motivate people to vote.

Jury duty pools are taken from different places in different states.  It's not linked to voter registration everywhere (given the unfortunate perceptions of jury duty, I don't think they should be linked at all).  In DC, there's such a shortage of eligible jurors, in part because so many residents are ineligible, that the city had to pass a law promising people they wouldn't have to serve more often than once every 2 years.

I don't like the AZ lottery proposal because it entices people to vote for the wrong reason.  Do we want uninformed people voting just for a chance to win $1M?  That's not how democracy is supposed to work.

Same-day registration SHOULD be available everywhere.  In 2002, as the Senate was considering McCain-Feingold and the Help America Vote Act, Sen. Wellstone introduced a bill which would have required every state to implement same-day registration.

I agree that Election Day should be a federal holiday--for philosophical reasons as much as practical ones.  An interim step might be something Canada has done: up here, it's not an official holiday, but employers are obligated to give all employees 3 consecutive hours to vote.  If you normally work 9-6, you can come in at 12 or leave at 3.  So at least people are given mandatory adequate time off work to vote.

I also think campaign finance and election reform play into this.  Clean elections with almost totally public financing, contributions limited to $100 per person and prohibited from any entity but individuals, free airtime on TV and radio (which takes nothing more than enforcing the Communications Act of 1934 would all help the overall environment--rebuild confidence in the overall political system which would lure more people to vote.  Another interesting incentive Canada does: even if a party wins no seats in Parliament, they get $1.75 in the next election for every vote they get in this one.  So that wipes out the "wasted vote" idea.  Even if a minor party candidate in your riding doesn't win, your vote means they get more public funding.  That might be something for the US to consider.  Also, political donations are tax-deductible (though deductions are regressive so I might prefer a capped, fully refundable credit).

I recently ran across some good data on who doesn't vote, and why.  It's posted here.

Of particular note: According to the analysis, nonvoters tend to be young, less well educated and less well-off. Unregistered respondents explained their status by telling pollsters they haven't had time to register (19 percent), recently moved (17 percent), didn't care about politics (14 percent) or didn't have faith in the system (12 percent). Those who stayed home in 2004 said they weren't old enough (16 percent), weren't registered (15 percent) or were unhappy with the choices before them (12 percent).