Back on November 6, I made this comment about the election:
"According to CNN, as of this morning, approximately 120,558,000 votes had been cast for either Obama or McCain. In 2004 Bush and Kerry got slightly over 121,068,000 votes between them. While there are more votes to be counted, and the final vote total in 2008 will probably be more than the 2004 total, it looks like the percentage of the total eligible voters who actually voted will be down.(See Update below.)
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Update (11/06/08 8:35 a.m.): Stories in the media have indicated that the turnout was the highest in generations. Maybe the count is going more slowly than I would have thought. We will see."
Well, I was wrong – because the counting was going more slowly than I thought. As of this morning, CNN shows 125,016,000 votes for President. That number of votes is 3.3% higher than 2004, and the total could wind up being about 4% more than 2004 by the time they are done counting. That is a sizable increase, though it is just a little bit more than the increase in the overall population of the United States from 2004 to 2008. The population of the U.S. as of July 1, 2004, was estimated to be 294,655,000. As of October 22, 2008, it was estimated to be 305,468,000. Lowering the 2008 estimate to 304,500,000 so you have comparable numbers (i.e., July 1 to July 1) shows a 3.7% increase in population from 2004 to 2008. Obviously, these numbers are not eligible voters, but I think the increase would be about the same. So, there was a small increase in the percentage of voters participating, but not a big one. What probably happened was that Obama wound up increasing the percentage of people voting in certain categories (for example, maybe Blacks and young people), while unhappiness with the Republican candidates and/or unhappiness with the Bush Administration and the Republicans in Congress from 2001 through 2006, decreased participation among other groups.
One more comment: The slowness of the counting of the last 3% or 4% of the popular vote perhaps provides another reason why electing the President by a straight popular vote is not be a good idea. Think about he possibility of a really close contest in the popular vote – and then consider additional votes coming in over days and weeks after election day. It would be Florida 2000 (or the gubernatorial election in Washington state in 2004) writ large. They couldn’t recount the votes in just Florida on a timely basis in 2000. How could we recount all of the votes in the whole country? And what about ballot security and standards for counting the votes? Appalling as it is to say, those things don’t matter if the election isn’t close. If it’s 60-40 (or even 53-46), it doesn’t matter. When it’s Florida in 2000, it does matter. If it was that close nationally, every vote everywhere would matter. In the governor’s race in Washington state in 2004, the election authorities in Seattle were discovering additional uncounted ballots days and weeks after the election. That was a big problem, but it was just one state. A close popular vote, and a President elected by popular vote, would make that a national problem – and could de-legitimatize the election in a way that would make Florida 2000 look like the proverbial Sunday School picnic.
Electing the President by popular vote. I don’t think I want to go there.
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