Back in 2004, after the second questionable election of George W Bush as U.S. President, I did some research and learned that he had been originally selected in 2000 by only 27% of eligible voters. How can it be healthy in a democracy for a leader to be elected by one-quarter of its voters? Wouldn’t society be better off if the mandates of our leaders were much clearer than that?
On the radio at that time, I heard about some bills in Congress being put through for tax deductions, and this made me put 2 and 2 together. Tax credits and deductions are intended to compensate for unfairness in the tax code, or in many cases, to encourage behavior that is beneficial to society.
What could be more beneficial than getting more voices heard, more people voting, maybe even nearly everyone? Let me say right off that more people than I expected responded to this question by saying they’d rather not encourage voting by low-information voters. This is usually a euphemism for poor and immigrant voters, so let’s face it, these cynics are just plain bigots. Besides, there are lots of “low-information” voters out there who are well-off, well-educated, and apathetic.
Australia has handled this problem since the 1920s by requiring everyone to vote. There is a penalty of about $20 for nonvoters who don’t have an excuse such as illness. They vote on weekends, and make it into a party -- a celebration, really, of democracy. Over 96% of Australians are voters.
America couldn’t manage such a plan because we ostensibly don’t like to be told what to do. But rewarding voting with a tax credit would fit right in with our accepted system of incentivizing behavior via financial reward. (A tax deduction would only apply to those who owe taxes; a tax credit is better because it could be given to anyone.)
Back in 2004, I started writing to lots of people and even set up a website at taxcreditforvoting.org to get the word out. One of the first knee-jerk reactions I used to get when mentioning this idea was that it’s like buying votes, but of course, nobody’s asking anyone to vote in any particular way, just to go to the polls and cast their own vote. It’s not like Chicago in the 1920s, when my father was approached and offered $1 to vote for a certain candidate. He chose to take the $1 and vote for someone else. As he left the building, someone approached him and asked threateningly why he voted for the wrong guy! Now that’s what you call buying votes (except it didn’t work).
The credit idea has taken off lately, it seems, but before I get into that, let me share why a tax credit for voting is such a good idea.
Benefits
First off, it really encourages everyone to vote. Think of how hard people work to write down every odometer reading so they can get a relatively small tax deduction for mileage. People will go a long ways to get paid what’s owed them. Those who have an urgent work task, or who need a babysitter, or are tired, just won’t have a good excuse to avoid voting if they know that they can earn money by doing it.
Second, this means that candidates can save the huge chunk of money and effort they put into getting out the vote, and making their candidate have enough appeal, charisma, or notoriety to attract enough attention to get people to the polls. Candidates can instead focus on what they plan to do, who they are, and what a vote for them will accomplish. People listening to ads will know they’ll be voting, and are more likely to seek out information on which candidate they want, rather than spend time evaluating whether to vote at all.
Third, candidates will stop gearing their campaigns toward “likely voters” and instead will have to appeal to all voters. Their plans and programs will have to tilt toward supporting the needs of average people, or underrepresented people, who may otherwise think that voting is meaningless to them. They won’t find it so meaningless if there’s something in it for them, like a payment from the government.
Fourth, results will yield a more accurate mandate for the winners, on both national and local ballots. In many states, polls may show that one candidate is heavily favored, leading voters to think the results are a forgone conclusion, and that their vote won’t matter. But if they are getting a credit for voting, they’ll vote anyway. This will make local votes more accurate, even if they’re a lot less sexy than the national contests the media spend the most time on. And in some cases, the polls could be proven wrong when the actual voters have their say. When someone is elected with a majority of eligible voters, it’s a lot more convincing and meaningful than if they won the vote with only 27% of the voters backing them.
Fifth, voter suppression will be made much more difficult when it actually harms people financially. Our society takes that far more seriously than just the concept that someone decided not to vote because it was too difficult to get a photo ID at a voter center 200 miles away after filling out an application in triplicate using organic beet juice on pages 1 and 3, and blue ink but not a Sharpie on pages 2 and 4.
Sixth, implementing this proposal would be easy. All states already have in place meticulous records and systems for tracking voters. Even Trump’s lawyers couldn’t find a weakness in this system after 60 lawsuits. And if the idea were established for federal elections, it would only have to be paid out every two years.
Recent Interest
Recent interest in a tax credit for voting seems to have picked up, though to my knowledge, it has not been instituted yet. A bill was proposed in Illinois in 2019 to provide voters $25 for voting. A ballot initiative was attempted in Colorado in 2020 to pay voters $40 in both primaries and general elections.
A law professor writing in 2019 for Politico magazine advocated paying people $50 to incentivize voting. One of her points was that a tax credit for voting would help ensure that politicians become much more responsive to what people actually want, citing as one example polls where some 90% of people favor certain gun restrictions that simply are not being enacted. Such politicians may not be re-elected if they ignore voters to such an extent, and if nearly everyone actually votes.
Skeptical that politicians would enact such a credit, the law professor suggested enlisting billionaires to help, but I suspect that solution would have serious flaws, as billionaires would have a hard time not advancing their own interests in preference to the common good. Perhaps a better idea is to involve nonprofit organizations. In fact, nonprofits have tried this and offered a $10,000 voting lottery in Philadelphia, and a $25,000 prize in Los Angeles, both of which appear to have increased voting considerably.
A Washington Post opinion piece in 2019 suggested giving young adults a $100 prepaid debit card if they vote twice before they’re 30, with the idea that this could help make voting a habit for young people.
A 2022 Washington Post article advocated for a voting tax credit, arguing, in part, that “there would no longer be an A-list of ‘likely voters’ and B- and C-level lists of those less likely to participate. Political candidates would have to appeal to all of us, rather than strategize on how to turn out their base while discouraging the other side’s supporters from casting ballots.”
The strategists who work to reduce voter participation would oppose such a proposal strongly, and this sadly includes most of today’s Republicans, who have increasingly become an extremist bunch fully aware that without controlling voter participation, their unpopular stances would send them packing. Their only hope seems to lie in gaming the system rather than allowing it to function as intended.
Let’s hope, or even better, let’s work to see that a tax credit for voting is implemented somewhere. It might start as a pilot program that could provide evidence, hopefully of success. A Fordham University study published in the Journal of Politics compared sending some voters a reminder to vote, and sending others a financial incentive to vote; the incentive increased voter participation by 5%. I have a feeling that it would have a much bigger impact if it became the law, and the custom, of the land.
And if it works, our whole democratic system would be strengthened in the most healthy way. What better argument could there be for having a tax credit?