Should we make people vote, like they do in Australia? Should we pay people to vote, as Yale Law School Professor Stephen Carter suggests?
Do we really have a problem at all?
In the Additional Materials, I have provided PDFs about Republican and Democratic Primary Elections (March 3, 2020). There are two versions of each, the cumulative report tells what happened in Harris County as a whole in each primary.
Write a 2 – 5 page essay about voter turnout in the two March 2020 primary elections in Harris County, and in your voting precinct. I found mines using my friend’s street address in Harris County which the information is also provided in Additional materials. Make sure you give specific turnout numbers and percentages for each primary the county as a whole, and for your precinct. Discuss what you found. How does your neighborhood compare to the county in terms of turnout in each primary? Is your neighborhood more Democratic or more Republican than the county as a whole? Why do you think that is? Finally, do you think we should do anything as a society to increase voter turnout, and – if so, what?
Hint: a voting precinct is like a neighborhood. It’s unlikely to have more than a couple thousand people. If you’re trying to tell me how tens of thousands of people voted in your precinct, you’re doing it wrong.
Submit in Word. Cite your sources.