Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy gave us another reason why it’s a good thing he’ll be out of a job soon: he doesn’t understand the basics of one of the most crucial policy aspects of it.
Recently, Cassidy was quoted musing about the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act and, even though he sponsors the one and only version of it, would like to see changes to it. Basically, insofar as the act of voting it requires official government-issued identification in order to vote, and it restricts the use of mail-in ballots to certain special cases that prevents mass-mailing.
However, Cassidy isn’t on board with control that tight. Moreover, he wants to encourage participation, which he imagines would come from not restricting mail ballots but expanding their use such as Oregon’s practice of mailing ballots to all who were registered to vote with that vast bulk coming from driver’s license interactions. Indeed, he claims having closed primary elections constitute an impediment to voting, even as the majority of states restrict voter choices when selecting a particular political party’s nominee for offices, and tried to back this sentiment by noting that voting turnout for the GOP closed primary in May that announced his defeat had significantly lower turnout than his 2020 general election victory.
There is much ignorance in these comments. While mail ballots do in fact generate increased turnout, this causes the quality of democratic decision-making to decline and opens the door to tactics coercive or capitalizing on indifference. This is as people don’t vote not so much because they don’t like their choices, but more because they weren’t interested enough and too busy even to the point they forgot. Over two-fifth of nonvoting registrants in the 2024 election expressed this while not even half of that said they were turned off or faced some impediment. (The remainder cited reasons such as being out of town, illness, or others not related to disinterest, dislike, or barriers.)
The reason why well over half of nonvoters cited reasons that, summed up, they couldn’t be bothered is because they essentially were satisfied with their choices presented. Fewer than ten percent cited some kind of barrier that presumably Cassidy had in mind that mail ballots or primary type would resolve. Overwhelmingly, nonvoting is summarized as you can lead a voter to the polls, but you just can’t make him vote, because forgone opportunity costs in alternative activities are greater than any benefit he would perceive from making a choice.
His views on primary type particularly are half-baked. Whatever degree to which a primary nomination process restricts the input of non-party members, no one is turned away from voting in these elections. If necessary, a simple administrative change allows a voter to cast ballots for a preferred candidate. Nor is his supposed evidence on turnout in any way validating. Evaluating turnout results from a party primary held in the spring stood up next to a general election in the fall with a presidential election on the ballot compares apples with oranges. Again, lower party primary turnout is even more prone to the satisfaction effect – many registrants don’t care who the nominee is because they know they will prefer whoever over the other party’s – and the refusal to spend the minimal time necessary to make a choice makes perfect cost/benefit sense.
That’s why increasing mail ballot access (which only one-sixth of all countries permit in some form) degrades democratic decision-making. It encourages to add input into the process those who put so little thought into the most important thing a citizen can do, those most prone to be swayed by emotion, demagoguery, pressure, or coercion – all of which reduce the quality of the decision, if not cedes power to special interests that mocks one man, one vote. It brings all of the foibles, if not illegalities, of ballot harvesting to the fore that subverts the quality and sanctity of democratic choice.
As the data show, Cassidy’s mail-in suggestions marginally should increase voting rates, but nothing more and would decrease the quality of democracy, and his jihad against political parties having at least some control over the most important decision party members can make, party nominations, will do nothing to boost turnout. Given the absolutely fundamental nature of voting to the republic’s health and that policy-makers elected from it should have a firm grasp of the issues involved, Cassidy clear fails at it and provides another reason he deserved to get booted from office.
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