What Does Civic Engagement Look like in the US?

Alexis de Tocqueville famously remarked that America is a “nation of joiners.”^[1] Civic life in the US has long been characterized by the richness and diversity of opportunities for Americans to get involved. Compared to other countries, the level of civic engagement, or participation and involvement in community and public life to achieve positive outcomes, has historically painted a flattering picture of a vibrant and flourishing democracy.

This picture, like the famous Norman Rockwell print (Figure 8.1), depicted Americans who were active in the communities—whether through fraternal or service organizations like the Elks, Lions, Moose, Kiwanis, Knights of Columbus, Rotary Club, and so on; parent-teacher organizations; or organized labor unions and professional associations. In the 1950s, nearly 50 percent of all Americans reported attending church services at least once a week.^[2] Everyday Americans found and sought opportunities to get involved.

This era is romanticized as the height of social capital, where norms of trust and reciprocity flourished between relationship networks. Civic life produced bonding opportunities between individuals and communities of shared characteristics, interests, and demographics. However, these organizations also provided bridging opportunities, where cross-cutting relationships were formed across differences, often anchoring communities across class lines.^[3]

Today, many would remark that the nature of civic life in America has changed (and perhaps not for the best). Once, Americans joined with one another and found opportunities to be together as a community—often joining bowling leagues as a classic example. Today, however, we are “bowling alone.”^[4] Church membership and attendance have rapidly declined.^[5] Today, Americans are more isolated and pursue individual forms of entertainment and fulfillment rather than through the community.

This narrative, however, overlooks the landscape of participation across the fifty states. Regions across the United States have their own distinct political culture or different perspectives about the ideal role of citizenship and views toward government.^[6] Political scientist Daniel Elazar characterized states as fitting into one of three different political cultures based on early settling patterns and their initial orientations toward government. States with a moralistic political culture, primarily in the upper Midwest and West, place a premium on civic engagement and public life. Citizens ought to play a preeminent role in utilizing government to shape the public or the common good.

If these subtypes of political culture are thought to be on a continuum, states with an individualistic political culture would be in the middle. States with an individualistic political culture, largely concentrated in the Midwest and mid-Atlantic states, tend to view government and political participation as a means to an end. If government can be used to achieve the desired outcome, then civic engagement and political participation ought to be promoted. Otherwise, participation for the sake of participation is less than required. Finally, states with a traditionalistic political culture, concentrated in the American South, place little value on political participation because the role of government is to preserve the existing social hierarchy and structures. A lack of involvement (by most) ensures that the status quo persists. For a longer discussion, see Chapter 10.

These cultures appear to be deeply ingrained. Citizens have many different forms of participation available to them, yet significant inequalities and hurdles exist that prevent full participation. In what ways do the choices made by state governments promote or hinder democratic citizenship and participation?

What Are the Different Types of Participation?

Civic engagement is more than “just” politics. As such, participation takes many different forms. Much of that participation takes place through volunteering, or giving of time freely, in nonpolitical outlets.

Volunteering can occur through formal or informal outlets depending on whether it is done through an organization or independently. As Figure 8.3 shows, the overwhelming majority of Americans engage in informal activities like talking with friends, family, and neighbors or doing research to learn more about issues of public concern. Americans are more likely to report engaging in nonpolitical forms of civic engagement in general compared to overtly political or partisan forms of participation.

Much of what political scientists know about civic engagement and political participation is from individuals self-reporting their behavior in surveys and public opinion polls. This often leads to a social desirability bias, where respondents overreport favorable behaviors and opinions and minimize controversial or unfavorable behaviors or opinions. Behaviors like voting, for example, are viewed as socially desirable—so many people report that they voted when, in fact, they may not have.^[7]

Broadly, political participation takes two dominant forms. The first is institutional political participation. This is participation through common, previously agreed upon formal channels to influence public policy and the political process. In our federalist system, the United States has more than ninety thousand different units of government. Moreover, a significant number of positions throughout these units of government are elected positions—from president to even, perhaps unbelievably at one moment in time, dogcatcher.^[8] Behaviors that are passive, like displaying a yard sign or posting something on social media, are more common than active behaviors.

More active features of campaigning and supporting candidates for office can take many different forms. Some pursue paid employment or internships for academic credit on political campaigns. Others volunteer by giving their time to support candidates and ballot measures, most frequently by engaging in door-to-door canvassing or by phone/text-banking potential supporters.

An increasing number of Americans give small-dollar donations online to candidates via websites like ActBlue and WinRed.^[9] Ideologically polarized activists (liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans) are more likely to give and to give generously to multiple candidates—even candidates across the country.^[10]

An even smaller number of citizens play an active role in the public policy and governing process. Less than 10 percent of Americans report contacting an elected official or attending a public meeting. While citizens are able to testify at legislative committee hearings at state capitols throughout the country, few take advantage of this opportunity. Likewise, few attend formal “lobby days” at state capitols organized by interest groups to bring attention to their policy priorities. Less than 2 percent of Americans have ever attempted to run for office themselves, arguably the most direct way to influence government.^[11]

The most common form of political participation in the United States is voting in elections. Eighty percent of Americans believe that “voting in elections is very or somewhat important to be a good member of society.”^[12] Unfortunately, that is not to say that 80 percent of citizens vote in American elections—far from it.

Americans are asked to cast a ballot more frequently than citizens of other countries.^[13] Most offices in the US follow a two-stage process where candidates first vie in a primary election to determine which candidate will represent their political party in a general election, where voters ultimately determine which candidate is elected to serve in office.

At the federal level, voters participate in a presidential election every four years. More voters participate in this type of election than any others. Every two years, voters also participate in congressional elections, or as they are more typically known, midterm elections, since they occur in the middle of a presidential term. All 435 seats in the House of Representatives and one-third of the 100 US Senate seats are up for election in every congressional and presidential election.

Frequently, but not always, state elections occur at the same time as presidential and midterm elections. These elections are when voters elect their governor and other statewide officers as well as members of their state legislature among other offices. Five states (Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, and Virginia) have their state elections in “off years.”^[14] For example, while voters in most states voted for their governor in either November 2018 or November 2020, Louisiana voted for governor in 2019.

Louisiana is also a state that utilizes runoff elections. While most elections in the United States follow plurality rule—whichever candidate receives the most votes wins—Louisiana is one of a few states that utilizes majority rule. In order to win, a candidate must receive 50 percent of the vote. If no candidate receives 50 percent in the initial race, the top two vote-getters run in another election to determine which candidate wins. In 2019, incumbent Governor John Bel Edwards received a plurality of the vote in the October election, winning 47 percent of the vote compared to 27 percent for the second-place finisher. However, since no candidate received at least 50 percent of the vote, the top two candidates faced each other in a runoff election in November 2019, where Edwards won reelection with 51 percent of the vote.

Finally, voters also participate in municipal elections for their town or city, where they elect mayors, city councillors, and so on. At an even more local level, voters participate in school board elections to elect the governing body for their local school district.

Given this volume, perhaps as a result, voter turnout—the percentage of eligible voters to cast a ballot—varies considerably based on the type of election. Sixty-seven percent of eligible voters cast a ballot in the 2020 presidential election between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Yet only 46 percent participated in the 2022 midterm elections. As Figure 8.6 reveals, that sort of gap between presidential and midterm elections is common. Voter turnout in municipal elections is typically less than 30 percent, and school boards rarely have voter turnout above 10 percent.^[15]

The second dominant form of political participation is extrainstitutional (or noninstitutional) participation. Some activists and organized interest groups utilize a strategic mixture of (1) inside strategies that utilize traditional forms of political participation to influence government and policymakers and (2) outside strategies meant to disrupt the status quo and apply pressure to enact change. Others pursue extrainstitutional forms of participation because they feel that institutional avenues are either unavailable to them or unlikely to be responsive.

Whether these are citizen-driven grassroots initiatives or “astroturf” campaigns facilitated by elites to give the appearance of mass participation, more and more Americans are engaging in this type of activity. Political protest is the most common form of extrainstitutional participation and takes many different forms.

People express significant, vocal opposition by assembling large crowds, marching, picketing, holding signs, and so on. Some engage in civil disobedience, peacefully and intentionally breaking a law as a form of protest. Some protest using their pocketbook by either boycotting (intentionally refusing to patronize a place) or buycotting (intentionally choosing to patronize a place) retailers based on political views. For example, just related to LGBTQ equality, Chick-fil-A, Bud Light, and Target all have been protested and counterprotested.^[16]

Historically, few Americans engage in protests. While the decade of the 1960s is perhaps rightly romanticized as a time of activism, roughly 250,000 people attended the famous March on Washington led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963.^[17] In contrast, between 2017 and the end of 2020, at least twenty-two million Americans (likely more) participated in some type of nonviolent protest as a conservative estimate.^[18]

In response to Donald Trump’s inauguration as president, estimates place somewhere between three and five million Americans participating as part of the January 21, 2017, Women’s March by joining either the rally in Washington, DC, or organized events in many large cities throughout the country.^[19]

State capitols have seen a significant number of organized and successful protests. For example, the “Red for Ed” movement led to teacher strikes and visits to capitols across many states. As a result, many teachers received raises, and class sizes were reduced in many instances.^[20]

The largest protests in American history occurred during the summer of 2020 as part of the Black Lives Matter movement, as perhaps as many as 10 percent of the US population attended at least one protest during the summer of 2020 after the murder of George Floyd.^[21]

Protest is not just a tool available to those on the political left. The Tea Party started off as a protest movement before becoming a more prominent faction of the Republican Party.^[22] Every year, thousands upon thousands descend on Washington, DC, for the March for Life, a rally against abortion rights, even after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.^[23]

Protest can be effective in bringing attention to important issues and making the government responsive. Nonviolent protest has higher rates of success than political violence but is not always successful.^[24] Based on research on nonviolent protests, campaigns that have more than 3.5 percent of the total population participating have never failed to bring about change.^[25]

State governments, however, are not passive observers of citizen protests. Since January 2017, twenty-one states have successfully implemented legislation making protests more difficult. This type of legislation has been proposed in forty-five of the fifty states as of August 2024. These proposals include levying stiffer penalties, expanding resources for police to confront protesters, and broadening the definition of what constitutes rioting, among others.^[26] The give-and-take between protesters and the protested surely will continue as the opportunities for institutional and extrainstitutional participation are shaped by this relationship. In theory, democratic government only works legitimately when it has the consent of the governed. To give that consent, broad participation is a prerequisite.

Who Participates, and Why Don’t More People Participate?

Political scientist E. E. Schattschneider famously wrote that the “flaw in the pluralist heaven is that the heavenly chorus sings with a strong upper-class accent.”^[27] In a representative democracy, there is an expectation that all interests are free to compete and that the government ought to be responsive to the majority, in general, or at least produce outcomes that are generally agreeable (i.e., pluralism).

One of the reasons that Schattschneider argued about this flaw is because there is a bias in terms of who participates in American political life.^[28] In general, those with more education and more income are much more likely to vote and participate in politics. As Americans get older, they are more likely to register and turn out to vote. Voters who are part of the active workforce are more likely to participate than those who are unemployed. While the racial gap between White and Black Americans has closed in recent years, there is a clear racial difference in voter turnout as well. Once differences in socioeconomic status are taken into account, however, this difference vanishes.^[29]

Figure 8.8 – Voter Registration and Turnout Rates by Key Demographics
Data Source: United States Census Bureau. “Historical Reported Voting Rates.” https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/voting-and-registration/voting-historical-time-series.html. Graphs made by author. Note: Turnout by age group is calculated out of total population. Other figures are calculated using the citizen population.

These turnout figures represent an electorate that does not fully reflect the diversity of America.^[30] In the 2022 election, 34 percent of voters were older than sixty-five years old, while 27 percent of nonvoters were under thirty years old. White Americans represent 75 percent of voters, while non-White Americans make up 45 percent of nonvoters. Those with at least a college degree account for 43 percent of voters, but those without a college degree account for 74 percent of nonvoters. Finally, 32 percent of voters possess a family income of more than $100,000 per year, while 80 percent of nonvoters earn less than a six-figure salary as a family. Even as America’s electorate gets more diverse, voters, compared to nonvoters, are older, Whiter, and more formally educated and earn more in income.^[31]

These, however, are national trends. Figure 8.9 reveals significant statewide variation in turnout. States like Minnesota and Maine have voter turnout, on average, higher than 65 percent over the last twenty years. Contrast that with Hawaii, Oklahoma, Texas, and West Virginia, which have an average voter turnout of less than 45 percent. That is a considerable 20 percent difference between states at the more extreme ends of the distribution. More than thirty states have an average turnout of between 50 percent and 60 percent. What accounts for this considerable state variation?

The US Census asks registered voters their reasons for not voting. The single biggest factor why Americans report not voting is a lack of interest (18 percent). The second most cited reason for not voting is disliking the candidates or campaign issues (15 percent). Reviewing the rest of the list, many of these reasons may appear like minor items that could easily be overcome by many. Moreover, there is little reason to suspect that these reasons vary by state in ways similar to the trends presented in Figure 8.10.

Political scientists have approached understanding voter participation by focusing on why people choose not to vote rather than identifying why someone chooses to vote. In short, people do not participate because often they cannot, they will not, or nobody asked them to participate.^[32] More broadly, while political scientists may be loath to share this, it is irrational to vote according to the leading theory, the rational calculus of voting.^[33] The decision to vote is a function of weighing the costs and benefits of voting before making a decision. Mathematically, this is represented by the formula

V = pB – C D.

This equation can be understood as follows: The decision of whether or not to vote (V) is a function of the probability (p) your vote is decisive multiplied by the benefits (B) you receive from voting, minus the costs (C) associated with voting, plus one’s sense of civic duty (D).

V stands for the decision to vote or not. If (after doing all the computations on the right-hand side of the equation) the value of V is positive, the voter will turn out to vote. If the value is zero or negative, it would be irrational to vote—so they abstain from voting. In the following paragraphs, each component of this equation will be explored in more depth.

The p term in the equation stands for the probability that your individual vote is decisive in determining the outcome of the election. More than 150 million Americans voted in the 2020 presidential election, and Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump by more than seven million votes, so the decision of any one voter to stay home or not surely did not decide the outcome, even in extremely contested presidential elections like the 2000 or 2016 elections, when the winner of the popular vote lost the Electoral College.

In theory, the probability that one’s vote is decisive ought to increase as the election gets “smaller” or more local. When fewer people participate, a single vote carries more weight. Yet Americans frequently live in “red states” and “blue states.” More than 82 percent of Americans live in a state government trifecta, where one political party controls both chambers of the state legislator and the governorship.^[34] Americans are increasingly geographically sorted into heavily Republican and Democratic communities.^[35] Democrats increasingly dominate in urban areas, while Republicans dominate in rural areas. To the extent voters get a meaningful choice between the two parties, it is often in the suburbs. Whether it is the race for governor, mayor, state legislator, city council, and so on, most Americans do not have much of a meaningful choice, since most outcomes are all but secured well ahead of Election Day.

In 2022, the average margin of victory for contested state legislative races was 27.7 percent.^[36] A nontrivial number of state legislative races do not even have candidates from both parties. During the 2022 elections, more than 30 percent were not contested (i.e., the race did not have at least both a Democrat and a Republican running against each other). Some of that is primarily a function of where Americans choose to live—not necessarily rooted in politics. However, state governments are responsible for redistricting or drawing lines of legislative districts for Congress and their respective state legislatures after every Census. Sixteen states utilize commissions to draw their state legislative districts—whether these are fully independent commissions or commissions that also incorporate politicians. The remaining thirty-four states leave the process to their state legislature.^[37] These states are more prone to gerrymander, or intentionally draw district boundaries, during redistricting in a way that inequitably benefits a group or political party. (Fun fact: The term is often mispronounced. It should be pronounced with a hard G, like “Gary.”)^[38]

The B term in the equation stands for the benefits you receive as a voter should your preferred candidate win the election. While polarization between the two parties may be considered a negative, the growing ideological distance between the parties is actually associated with promoting higher levels of voter participation and civic engagement.^[39] States controlled by either the Republican or the Democratic Party are moving further apart ideologically, raising the stakes for each election.^[40]

The C term in the equation stands for the costs associated with voting. This is subtracted from the product of the p and B terms. Multiplying the p term (the probability that your vote decides the outcome) by the B term (the benefits you receive if your preferred candidates win) is likely going to be infinitely/infinitesimally small. Thus, for almost all voters, the costs will outweigh the benefits of voting.

The first type of cost that voters face is information costs. Especially at the local level, knowing when to vote is important. While most general elections occur in November of even years (as previously discussed), primary, local, and school board elections all occur at different parts of the calendar and vary by state. Many state and local races are also featured as part of nonpartisan elections, when voters do not have the ability to rely on the partisanship of candidates to inform who they intend to support. In general, these low-information elections have lower levels of voter turnout, since many voters are unwilling to do the research to make an informed vote.^[41]

Even if, however, voters know when and where to vote and then have taken the additional time to identify who they intend to support, there are additional costs to voting. Suffrage, or the right to vote, is not explicitly listed in the US Constitution. States, not the federal government, were given wide latitude to implement elections. As a result, most states initially only gave White landowning/taxpaying men the ability to vote. However, states always have moved at different speeds, as states gave women and racial minorities the right to vote well before the federal government.^[42] For example, New Jersey let people vote if they met property and tax requirements regardless of race or gender. Wyoming granted women the right to vote more than fifty years before the federal government intervened.

The federal government periodically intervenes to ensure that state requirements are uniform and that basic standards are upheld. After the Civil War, the Fifteenth Amendment ensured that states would not be able to deny the right to vote on account of race—giving many Black Americans the first opportunity to vote. In 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified, giving women the right to vote. During the Vietnam War, the Twenty-Sixth Amendment was ratified, lowering the voting age to eighteen years old. Additional pieces of federal legislation, like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, also increased the power the federal government had over states to ensure voting rights were more equitably distributed.

Today, leading scholars are calling to add an amendment to the Constitution to specifically enshrine the right to vote.^[43] To date, Congress has been unsuccessful in passing the For the People Act, the Freedom to Vote Act, or the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, three pieces of federal legislation that supporters argue would broaden voting rights. Given these stalled efforts, states are still at the forefront of the battle to extend or restrict voting rights. This discussion, perhaps more so than any other policy difference or institutional feature, echoes the competing themes of laboratories of democracy versus laboratories of autocracy. Who should be able to vote? How easy should it be for citizens to cast their ballot? What reasonable regulations are appropriate to ensure the integrity of our elections?

In terms of extending the right to vote, many local governments allow youth over the age of sixteen to vote in school board or local elections. Many states also allow seventeen-year-olds to vote in primaries if they will turn eighteen before the next general election.^[44]

While the federal government already prevents legal noncitizens from voting in federal elections, the House of Representatives recently passed the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act.^[45] Currently, noncitizens only can vote in specific local elections in California, Maryland, and Vermont. In addition, many states are adding additional layers to prevent noncitizens from voting in state or local elections. Seven states previously amended their state constitutions to prevent noncitizens from voting.^[46] Voters in eight states will be voting on constitutional amendments adding language stating that US citizenship is a requirement for voting (Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Wisconsin).^[47]

The final group subject to considerable debate and public policy is felons. This varies considerably by state. People previously convicted of a felony never lost their voting rights in two states and Washington, DC. On the other end of the spectrum, ten states do not automatically restore voting rights to felons after they have completed their sentences. The remaining states vary as to how voting rights are restored for people convicted of a felony after they have completed their prison sentences or after they have completed their prison sentence, probation, and parole.^[48]

Even within this legal framework, states have long found ways to make voting more difficult. After the Civil War, the American South implemented a series of Jim Crow laws that promoted racial segregation and further limited the rights of racial minorities, specifically Black Americans. These included literacy tests (requiring a demonstration of the ability to read and write in order to vote), poll taxes (fees that needed to be paid in order to vote), and grandfather clauses (in order to vote, your grandfather also needed to have the right to vote). To ensure that poor or illiterate Whites were able to participate, these restraints were selectively applied to voters of color. While the passage of the Twenty-Fourth Amendment outlawed poll taxes, many modern state proposals are often referred to as “modern Jim Crow laws” or “Jim Crow 2.0.”^[49]

The electoral institutions adopted by states are associated with state variation in voter turnout.^[50] So what aspects of today’s election administration vary by state, and how might they be associated with rates of voter turnout? How do states affect the cost of voting?

The first cost is the requirement to register to vote. In most advanced industrial democracies, the government automatically registers its citizens. In the United States, that burden falls on the individual voter. Voter registration is required in forty-nine of the fifty states, with the exception of North Dakota.

Within states, the registration requirements and process vary considerably. Today, twenty-four states and Washington, DC, have automatic voter registration.^[51] States are required to set registration deadlines within thirty days of an upcoming election. Fifteen states have deadlines between twenty-eight and thirty days. Nine states have deadlines between twenty and twenty-seven days before an election, while seven states have deadlines with one to fifteen days before an election.^[52] The remaining nineteen states have a process called same-day registration (SDR) or election-day registration (EDR). In these states, citizens are able to register to vote on Election Day or to register and cast a ballot on the same day during an early voting period. Research suggests that this sort of reform is positively associated with voter turnout and reducing inequality in turnout.^[53] Without an external deadline, interested citizens can register on the spot (or update an address on their voter registration) and vote—rather than having registration serve as an advance prerequisite to participate.

Another key aspect of the voting process that varies by state is where voting is allowed to occur. Historically, most voting occurs in person on Election Day. States have some degree of latitude on how long polls stay open on Election Day.^[54] States also have latitude on how many polling locations they establish and where they choose to locate them. For example, college students are more likely to vote if they are able to participate on their campus.^[55] For other voters, being able to utilize a voter center, a polling location that is not exclusive for only registered voters of certain precinct-based geographies, is associated with higher rates of voter turnout.^[56] One of the reasons that voting centers are received favorably by voters is that they know where to go—having to look up voting locations if they change from election to election is associated with lower rates of turnout.^[57] The farther voters have to travel, the less likely they are to vote—unless they are able to vote through “nontraditional means” like early voting or voting by mail.^[58]

Increasingly, more and more Americans take advantage of the opportunity to vote early.^[59] At this point, almost every state (forty-seven and Washington, DC) allows voters to cast their ballot in person ahead of Election Day.^[60] In 2020 (during the pandemic), almost 70 percent of those who cast a ballot did so before Election Day. In spite of how widespread this opportunity is across the fifty states, the opportunity to vote early is not associated with increases in voter turnout in most cases.^[61]

Eight states (California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, and Washington) and Washington, DC, allow elections to be conducted entirely by mail.^[62] Early research suggested that vote by mail (VBM) might be associated with lower rates of turnout;^[63] more recent work points to higher turnout.^[64] Reviewing “all the major studies on vote by mail elections conducted in the United States in the last 25 years,” political scientists have found that most studies find allowing ballots to be cast by mail is positively associated with higher rates of voter turnout.^[65]

Short of allowing all voters to cast a ballot by mail, many voters have the opportunity to vote absentee. This process also varies considerably by state.^[66] Some states require voters to confirm they will be absent or unable to vote in person in order to vote absentee. Twenty-eight states do not require voters to provide any sort of excuse. Likewise, in some states, voters who would like to vote absentee have to fill out an application every election cycle. In other states, voters are permanently on a list to receive an absentee ballot. Overall, no-excuse or no-fault absentee voting is associated with higher rates of turnout.^[67]

The final electoral reform to be discussed in this chapter is voter identification—more specifically, photo identification requirements. Thirty-six states either require or request that voters show some form of identification when voting in person.^[68] Eleven states have strict photo identification laws where voters must show a photo ID in order to participate. In states with nonstrict laws, voters can provide alternative forms of acceptable identification or otherwise verify their identity. States that experience higher levels of electoral competition between the two parties and switch to Republican control of state government are most likely to implement voter identification laws.^[69]

Michael Pomante, Scot Schraufnagel, and Quan Li have published a series of works based on their “Cost of Voting Index,” which takes many of the previously discussed election administration components into account.^[70] In states where the cost of voting is comparatively high, voter turnout is comparatively low. States with large or growing racial minority populations are more likely to implement most restrictions that increase the cost of voting. States are influenced by diffusion (adopting policies similar to neighboring states), partisan considerations, and yes, the racial composition of their citizens.^[71] In part, this is why these forms of election administration are considered Jim Crow 2.0.

The final part of the equation to understand whether it is rational to vote is the D term. If the formula for the calculus of voting was merely pB – C, then it would be irrational for almost any voter to participate. To make sense of this, voters add the D term to the equation, which stands for a voter’s sense of civic duty. While many countries have compulsory voting, where participation is required by law and voters face a small fine for not casting a ballot, the United States gives citizens the opportunity to choose not to vote. As a result, many voters are socialized into participating—through civic education in schools, parental influence, and other forces that help develop a sense that voting is something that one ought to do. Many Americans choose to cast a ballot in elections even though they are aware that their vote is unlikely to help produce the outcome they want. Yet they still choose to participate because voting is one of the most powerful ways to signal your preferences to the government. At the end of the day, who votes? Voters vote.

As a result, many measures of convenience voting—reforms like same-day registration, early voting, and vote by mail—do not impact voter turnout as much as one might think.^[72] In many cases, these reforms make voting convenient—but only for preexisting voters who were already inclined to participate. Likewise, states that adopt convenience measures already are more likely to have a political culture that promotes widespread voter participation. The reforms that are most associated with increases in participation and voter turnout are the ones that change the complexion of who could choose to become a voter.