There are still two more days of early voting, and election day itself is Saturday, but results from the first 11 days of electronic and phone voting suggest that this election may have the lowest turnout in Halifax history.
As of today at 10:45am, 40,126 people have cast votes, representing just 13.5 percent of eligible voters. This morning, election officer Cathy Mellet wouldn’t make any predictions about total turnout. “With elections,” she says, “you just don’t know until the end of the day Saturday.” But previously Mellet had anticipated that more than half of all votes would be cast electronically, through early voting. If so, and if present trends continue through to the end of electronic voting on Thursday, total voter turnout would be substantially lower than record low 37 percent of last election.
Breaking down the vote so far shows some interesting trends. About 30 percent of 18- and 19-year-olds have already voted, but that percentage drops way down to just five percent of ages 20 through 30. Only at age 31 does turnout increase to 7.5 percent, then it steadily increases to about 10 percent at age 38, then more through the 40s. Turnout is highest among those 55 and older, where rates reach 18 percent and higher.
This article appears in Oct 11-17, 2012.
I’ll wait until Saturday; something dramatic may happen by then.
I haven’t voted because I am taking my time to get to know my candidates’ opinions on certain key issues.
well im part of the 5% in the 20s. Still most of my friends haven’t voted because they don’t like any candidates and the ones that did spoiled their ballot
Internet and phone voting are the most insecure forms of voting possible. Furthermore, there is no way to conduct a recount if there are questions about the election. That is because it will be impossible to verify that the electronic representation of someone’s vote is accurate. Viruses can change votes on voter’s computers/phones, and elections officials computers are vulnerable to attack from anywhere.
Barbara Simons, co-author “Broken Ballots: Will Your Vote Count?”
I guess this just goes to show even if you make it “easy” people still don’t give a rat’s ass. People bitched because there was no online voting and they were too lazy to get their asses to the poll. They now have their online/telephone, sit my ass at home voting, so what is their fucking excuse now for not voting?
I am waiting and thought electronic voting was the worse timing possible… just when things get interesting, they want people to vote?
I am glad to see this article. Also Evoting is not secure, waiting to do it in person.
See: Hacking Democracy (HBO Documentary) … it would be too easy for someone to manipulate electronic votes.
You know, here I thought voting was supposed to be semi-secret ballots, yet they are collecting and publishing demographic data on the voters? Ugh.
Yeah, I know that your regular ballot has a serial number that’s tied to your name, but there was always the hope that they would only bother scanning in the voter list (with the hand-entered ballot serial numbers) if it was believed that fraud might have gone on. With electronic voting and this evidence that they are data mining, I find myself unable to trust our system… :/
We deserve what we’re gonna get.