Thursday, June 12, 2008

Academic Application: Voting

I found one of my sister's old handouts from AP Gov and it is actually pretty interesting. What I have below is a summary of an excerpt from The Empty Polling Booth. There are six groups, the book argues, of people who do not vote:

  1. The Positive Apathetics - 35% of Refrainers - These are usually educated, well-off individuals who think that voting is irrelevant. Many of them actually tell you that they are voters when they really are not.
  2. The Bypassed - 13% of Refrainers - These are less educated, low income income individuals who have a tough time following political campaigns.
  3. The Politically Impotent - 22% of Refrainers - These are alienated individuals who feel that they don't have any control over their political/personal lives. Teenagers, at least many of them, are politically impotent.
  4. The Physically Disenfranchised - 18% of Refrainers - These are the physically or legally disabled individuals who just can't make it out to the polls.
  5. The Naysayers - 6% of Refrainers - These are individuals who know damn well why they don't vote and will go at great lengths to explain to you why (click on "The Naysayers" for an example).
  6. The Cross-Pressured - 5% of Refrainers - These are individuals who are so torn between the candidates that they don't end up voting at all.
Ben Tan, do you remember this article?

2 comments:

  1. No, I don't think he handed it out this year...

    ReplyDelete
  2. That forgot to mention people like Alex Jones,who believe that their votes do not count, because the whole thing is rigged.

    ReplyDelete

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