Tag Archives: voting

Can We Make You Care?

Yesterday, I argued that local elections are important, and that the many people who only bother going to the polls in Presidential years should care about the people running state and local government.

As Indianapolis gears up for municipal elections this fall, the Center for Civic Literacy is trying to get that message out.

In a collaborative project with NUVO, WFYI and a number of civic organizations, we plan to identify individuals who are Marion County residents and registered to vote, but who do not vote in off-year elections; people who only go to the polls in national elections. Through interviews, relationship building, and educational events we will try to persuade these voters that they should  care about local issues and that they should vote in the upcoming municipal election.

The slogan of this effort is: Make them care!

The initiative is modeled after a similar effort in California, called “Make Al Care.”

In addition, we are working with those same civic organizations to put together a series of forums to be held in September and October titled, “Electing Our Future: What You Need to Know in Order to Cast an Informed Vote.” The goal is to increase informed engagement in the civic and political life of our city.

The programs will take place from 6-8pm at the Indianapolis Public Library’s Central location on St. Clair St. Current officeholders and candidates for public office will not participate–this is to be a nonpartisan educational effort.

Mon, Sept. 21st– How does Indianapolis Work? The Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce will take responsibility for this initial presentation, and will include a brief description of where we are in the federal/state/local scheme of things; a discussion of home rule/state authority; and a description of city structure: Mayor, Council, Departments, Municipal Corporations and what each does. The forum will explain how Unigov makes Indianapolis different from other cities, and will describe how we finance city services.

Tues, Oct. 6th– What are the issues we face? The Center for Civic Literacy and the League of Women Voters will be lead partners for this forum. How does Indianapolis deal with change? With diversity? What do citizens need to know to make informed decisions on quality of life issues: environmental, public health, education, transportation, arts and culture, civic life? How do we identify and allocate dwindling resources—with resources broadly defined to include civic, corporate and religious organizations and nonprofits, sources of expertise, & civic energy.

Tues, Oct. 20th– What do we want Indianapolis to look like 5, 10, 15 years from now? If we want a city that is healthy, wealthy & wise, how do we get there? The Greater Indianapolis Progress Committee will share insights from its Indy 2020 project.

These efforts to increase civic knowledge and engagement will have no effect unless we can enlist people who already care in the effort to make their children, colleagues, co-workers and others understand why local government matters, and why their votes are vitally important.

How do we make them care?

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Tending to the Nitty-Gritty

Our televisions and Internet feeds are rapidly filling with coverage of the 2016 Presidential race.

It’s hard to fault the media for its fascination with our quadrennial political spectacle, especially since the Republican field contains no fewer than seventeen candidates (at this count—who knows what other hats may be flung into the ring), many of whom are happily demonstrating that they are spectacularly unfit for public office.

The outcome of the national elections—not just for President, but also for the House and Senate—will have an enormous impact on economic, social and foreign policy, and I don’t want to minimize the importance of electing people who understand the complicated and delicate issues they will face.

What frequently gets lost in arguments over the direction our national government should take, however, is the importance of governing structures much closer to home, and the competence of the people we elect to deal with issues affecting our everyday lives.

A prominent example of the importance of local government—and its impact on civic equality—is the current outcry over incidents of police misconduct. The ubiquity of cameras has generated visual evidence of abuses that might previously have remained “under the radar,” and that evidence has sparked a national conversation about policing: how recruits are selected, the adequacy of training, and the role played by racial stereotypes, among other issues.

These incidents are not spread uniformly across the country; they are generally, although not always, evidence of poor local governing practices.

The importance of good policing to poorer communities is obvious. In cities where crime is poorly controlled, it is generally those neighborhoods that bear the brunt; residents of gated communities and wealthy subdivisions can and do employ additional security (further exacerbating the troubling gap between the haves and have-nots).

Beyond police and fire protection, local government policies and priorities have an immediate effect on those living within their jurisdictions. The ways in which city hall deals with the myriad everyday challenges of municipal life may seem boring until your uncollected garbage draws rats and other vermin, or the wheel of your car is bent in an unfilled pothole, or failure to remediate lead in older neighborhoods permanently diminishes the intellectual capacities of your children.

When we go to the polls to elect Mayors and City Councilors, a focus on their commitment to efficient and equitable delivery of essential public services is important. Quality of life issues are equally important. Public transportation may be a lifestyle choice for the executive who leaves his car in the garage and rides the bus to work, but it is a lifeline for the entry-level worker who can’t afford a car, and one reason that worker’s employer chose to locate where it did.

Far too many Americans ignore off-year elections. This is ironic, because our votes count more in state and local elections and because the policies and performance of local governments have a direct and immediate effect on our daily lives. They matter.

Tomorrow, I’ll tell you about an effort to make non-off-year-voting Indianapolis residents understand why they should care about who runs our city.

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What We Do and What We Say

My friend Morton Marcus has a good column in the recent issue of NUVO.

He reflects upon the most recent legislative session, and on Indiana politics generally, and in a make-believe conversation with one “Victor Van Nutt,” he makes a point my father used to emphasize: if you want to know what people really believe, what they really value, you’ll look at what they do–not at what they say.

“If we wanted local control of schools, we never would have allowed the state to take over financing education. If we wanted strong communities, we would not have voted for property tax controls starting with Otis Bowen and ended up supporting a constitutional amendment capping those taxes.

“On the other hand,” he continued, “if we wanted economy in government, we would have eliminated township governments, merged adjacent cities and towns, and merged under-populated counties.

“Then,” he went on, “if we truly believed in the virtues of small business, we wouldn’t yield our tax policies to the imagined desires of out-of-state corporations, hoping they will bring any kind of jobs to Indiana.

“We would stop shifting taxes to households and away from the big corporations. Remember, many small businesses are basically households not paying corporate taxes. We would not be anti-union since small businesses are not likely to be unionized.”

Until and unless Hoosiers start following what our government is actually doing–until we stop taking political figures at their word, and ignoring what they actually do once in office–nothing will change.

And of course, that advice also applies to us. If we just criticize those in power, content to complain about the “World’s Worst Legislature” while finding excuses not to vote–if we bitch and moan at cocktail parties while doing nothing to help change the system that keeps returning these same people to office–well, that says something about We the People and what we really value.

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No Wonder Nobody Votes

As if we didn’t know.

The Washington Post recently ran an article documenting what virtually every sentient American knows: thanks to gerrymandering and residential “sorting,” elections at every level are increasingly uncompetitive–when they are contested at all.

Here’s the lede

Fewer state legislative elections were hotly contested between Democrats and Republicans in 2014 than at any time in the last 40 years, according to a new study that offered more evidence of a historically polarized electorate.

The analysis of election results from last year found less than 5 percent of the U.S. population lives in a state House or state Senate district where the two leading candidates finished within 5 percentage points of each other.

At the same time, the number of races that don’t even draw competition is on the rise. Nearly a third of voters lived in state Senate districts in which only one candidate ran, while more than 40 percent lived in state House districts with only one option. Those numbers are far higher than four decades ago, when less than a quarter of residents lived in one-candidate districts.

The question, of course, is: what do we do about it?

There are no “good guys” here–both parties aggressively seek advantage, and when in a position to call the shots, both can be counted on to draw a map as favorable as computing power can devise.

It’s common–even fashionable–to berate citizens who don’t vote. But let’s be fair: why take time out of your day to visit a polling place if there are no contests?

It won’t solve the whole problem, but the first step to re-engaging voters must be to remove redistricting from the partisan political process. Here in Indiana, Common Cause and the League of Women Voters are devoting themselves to getting that done. (They are holding a forum at the Indiana Historical Society on June 6th, devoted to the issue.)

It’s an uphill battle, but it’s one we all need to join.

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Electing the Problems

I don’t know how many conversations I’ve had with people who couldn’t understand how the Indiana legislature could [fill in the blank with your choice of the biggest travesty]. During the just-concluded session, Republicans and Democrats alike posted highly critical messages to FB and Twitter, most of which involved some version of “what is the matter with these people?”

So– who elected these folks?

The Center for Civic Literacy recently worked with the Indiana Bar Foundation and others on the most recent iteration of the Civic Health Index, a periodic state by state measurement of civic engagement. In Indiana, the effort is co-chaired by Randy Shepard and Lee Hamilton, and the survey results may give us a clue about why so many elected officials in Indiana—not just in the legislature—are so disconnected from the attitudes and policy preferences of so many Hoosiers. That disconnect, as we saw with RFRA, leaves them susceptible to small but highly motivated interest group lobbyists.

Let me just share a few of the most pertinent metrics.

  • 6.5% of Hoosiers report working with neighbors to solve a community problem.  Indiana ranks 47th among the states.
  • 17.5% of us participate in associations or organizations. We rank 44th.
  • 69.2% of those who are eligible are registered to vote. We rank 37th.
  • In a presidential year, 69.2% of us vote. We rank 37th.
  • In the last off-year election, as you may have heard, 39.4% voted, ranking Indiana dead last among the states.
  • Only 11% of Hoosiers report ever contacting a public official. We rank 30th.

There is considerable evidence that higher levels of civic knowledge correlate with increased civic engagement. The statistics on civic knowledge are incredibly depressing: only 36% percent of Americans know that we have three branches of government, 58% cannot name a single federal Cabinet department—it goes on and on. People who don’t know how government works don’t participate in self-government.

The Center for Civic Literacy was formed to examine the causes and consequences of low civic literacy. Lack of participation is one of those consequences.

The question we can’t answer–at least, not yet–is: what would it take to get more people involved? What needs to happen in order to get more people out to vote? There are certainly reasons other than low civic literacy for low levels of civic participation—lack of competitive contests in gerrymandered districts, for example– but until we raise the level of citizens’ knowledge, we aren’t going to raise their levels of participation.

And without significantly higher levels of informed participation, we’ll just keep electing our problems.

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