TBT: Cast a Ballot, Win a Prize
A 2007 Proposal in New Jersey Would’ve Given Each Voter a Chance at a Cash Prize
N.J. Gov. Phil Murphy was re-elected in November by 84,286 votes, beating Jack Ciattarelli by about 3%. It was a surprisingly narrow win in blue New Jersey — due in part to historically low turnout. Just four in 10 eligible voters cast ballots, a shameful number that carries within it the seeds of disaster down the road.
This is not a new problem, as today’s Throwback-Thursday reprint makes clear. Turnout has long lagged during non-election years, and it tends to be worse in Democratic counties like Essex and Hudson. In 2005, as I wrote, the number was a then-record low of 48.5%.
Democrats saw this number and proposed gimmicks — buying turnout by enrolling every voter in a million-dollar lottery — even though the seeds of apathy actually were planted by repeated corruption probes, jailed politicians, high taxes, and the sad impression that change seemed impossible.
That 48.5% now seems like a heyday of voter engagement. And it is happening against the backdrop of a bad news from Washington and around the country on the voting front.
With Republican states moving to curtail access to the ballot, Democrats have crafted legislation to turn those efforts aside. However, Republicans — with help from two conservative Democrats — have scuttled efforts to pass a voting reform bill, leaving in place an array of state-level attacks on the franchise designed to minimize access to the polls and impose partisan controls on how votes are counted.
The Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act died in the Senate, thanks a Republican filibuster and refusal by two Democrats — Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kirsten Sinema of Arizona — to go along with their party’s efforts to carve out an exception to Senate cloture rules to allow for a full floor vote.
The bill would have rolled back some of the most egregious voting suppression tactics we have seen in decades, and its failure underscores the antidemocratic nature of the modern Republican Party and the cynicism of politicians like Manchin and Sinema, who are beholden to money and their own power.
The vote is a lynch-pin of our democratic-republic, which is based on the notion that we send people to Washington to carry out our wishes — or the wishes of a majority of voters in a given state or district. While the U.S. Constitution does not specifically outline a right to vote, this right is implied, clearly embedded in creation of the House of Representatives as the people’s house.
The importance of the vote can best be understood, I think, against the backdrop of American history, which in many ways has been a battle over who should have access to the franchise. During our earliest days, it was reserved for land-owning white men, but thanks to thousands of activists who have fought to expand it, the franchise has grown to include all natural-born or naturalized American citizens 18 years and older.
The Lewis Act — and several other reforms — must be passed. Protecting the right to vote means protecting our democracy. As for New Jersey, we need to stop taking our democracy for granted and actually get out to the polls.
Dispatches: Voting for fun and prizes
"New Jersey Voter Reward Program" under consideration
If some members of the state Legislature have their way, some lucky New Jersey resident could find himself $1 million richer — but only if he enters an election booth on Election Day and casts a ballot.
Bill A-3880, sponsored by Democratic Assemblymen Patrick Diegnan and Joseph Egan, both representing Middlesex County, would create a "New Jersey Voter Reward Program" that, according to The New York Times, would make everyone who votes in the state "eligible to win more than $1 million in a lottery drawing after an election," with those who vote in both the primary and the general elections having "two chances of winning."
The voting lottery would be paid for out of unclaimed winnings from the state’s regular lottery — 20 percent of the unclaimed money, according to the bill — along with voluntary donations, investment earnings and other money appropriated by the state Legislature.
Mr. Diegnan told the Gannett State Bureau last week that the legislation was intended to "encourage people to vote."
"So many folks at this particular point just don’t pay attention to the process, feel a disconnect, and maybe something like this will have people paying a little bit more attention," he said.
There is no doubt that turnout could be better. As the Times points out:
"Turnout has been steadily declining in the state, as it has elsewhere, with a record-low 48.5 percent of registered voters actually voting in the 2005 race for governor between Jon S. Corzine and Douglas R. Forrester."
But turning the polls into a massive lottery game is not the answer.
In an op-ed in the Arizona Daily Star in June, Ryan O’Donnell of FairVote, a nonpartisan group that advocates on behalf of electoral reforms, called Arizona’s proposed lottery plan a "gamble" that is unlikely to pay off. (Arizona voters defeated the proposal at the polls in November.)
"Yes, voters are failing to participate, but the reason is not lack of a big enough jackpot," he wrote. "Indeed, everyone already has serious money at stake. Taxes, transportation decisions, educational questions and so on have real economic impact on our lives.
"Adding yet another (unlikely) economic incentive will no doubt fail as a magic-bullet solution to low voter turnout. However, while there is no magic bullet, the root of all the contributing factors is the belief that our votes don’t count and don’t translate into effective representation."
That’s certainly the case in New Jersey, where voters are bombarded with what seems like a weekly lineup of corruption probes and stories of ethically challenged politicians. The state’s pay-to-play culture has taken its toll. We already assume that most of our elected officials work under a system in which their votes appear tied to the money they raise from contributors for their campaigns. And that many of the people who end up working for local, county and state agencies are those very contributors.
Turning our votes into lottery tickets would only extend this system of legalized bribery to average citizens, without addressing the real problems that are keeping people away from the polls.
We need to:
Ban firms who seek or win no-bid contracts from state, county and local governments from contributing to political candidates and ban all individuals or firms with business before a state, county or local regulatory or governing body from making contributions. Professional firms and politicians say the contributions are not linked, but the appearance is there and it turns off voters.
Tighten conflict-of-interest and lobbyist disclosure rules and ban the acceptance of all gifts by elected or appointed officials.
Enact a system of voluntary public financing for all elections in the state.
And make it easier to vote by holding elections on multiple days preferably on the weekends and by allowing some form of secure e-voting.
Cleaning up the system and making it easier to get to the polls is much more likely not only to increase turnout, but to increase real interest creating a better-informed electorate.
Democracy isn’t supposed to be about the big cash payoff. The payoff is supposed to be an efficiently functioning government that has the people’s interest at heart.