Why Americans Don’t Vote

TUCSON, Ariz.—The great myth of America’s participatory democracy is that people actually participate. In the 2016 election—the controversial, generation-defining 2016 election—61 percent of voting-age citizens cast a ballot, according to census data. And that was a presidential year. The last time America held midterm elections, 42 percent of voting-age citizens participated. This has been the trend for midterms for at least the past four decades: Turnout hovers at or below half of voting-age citizens.

In 2016, the lowest-turnout congressional district in the country was Arizona’s Third, a massive stretch of land that includes chunks of five counties in the state’s southwestern corner. Slightly more than 33 percent of voting-age citizens cast a ballot here that year—all the more shocking considering the district includes parts of Phoenix and Tucson, the state’s two most populous cities. The district is majority-minority, with more than two-thirds of the population identifying as Hispanic, black, or Native American. By contrast, Arizona’s Fifth, the state’s highest-turnout district in 2016, had almost twice as much voter participation in 2016. The Fifth is like the Third’s demographic inverse: According to state data, it is nearly three-quarters white. At their closest point, the two districts are less than 30 miles away from each other.