Nonvoters

VOTER TURNOUT IN consolidated democracies is generally determined by three factors: The provisions for suffrage as outlined in the constitution, electoral rules that govern the voting process, and individual voter characteristics. Nonvoters are therefore those individuals who do not participate in elections because they either do not legally have the right to vote, they face institutional barriers such as voter registration that make it more difficult to vote, or they share certain demographic and psychological characteristics that make it less likely they will vote.

Although the composition of the electorate has generally expanded in democracies worldwide as more populations have been granted suffrage, a large number of nonvoters remain due to various physical, social, and psychological obstacles to voting. In addition, the United States continues to have a relatively high proportion of the electorate that is comprised of nonvoters, especially compared to other advanced democracies.

In early democracies, nonvoters were the norm, comprising well over the majority of individuals living [Page 459]under representative government. In the first 50 years after the founding of the United States, nonvoters consisted of all persons except white property-holding males. It was not until 1840 that all states in the union extended suffrage to property-less white males. Women continued to be nonvoters in the United States until 1920, when the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution provided adult females with the franchise. African Americans fully became voters through a combination of the Twenty-Fourth Amendment in 1964, various Supreme Court decisions, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Together, these provisions swept away barriers such as the poll tax and literacy tests that had effectively barred African Americans in the south from voting.

Today in the United States, nonvoters are legally defined at the federal level as individuals under the age of 18 (as per the Twenty-Sixth Amendment), convicted felons, and non-citizens. At the state level, there are different rules that define voter eligibility, with some states repealing restrictions for convicted felons and legal immigrant non-citizens.

As in the United States, women and ethnic minorities worldwide have a history of being legally constrained to nonvoter status. Women first became voters in New Zealand in 1893 and Australia in 1902. By 1919, much of Europe had provided women with the franchise; however, women were nonvoters for longer in some European countries, including the Czech Republic (1920), Portugal (1931), Spain (1931), France (1944), Italy (1945), Greece (1952), and Switzerland (1971). Among developing areas, Azerbaijan (1920) and Georgia (1920) were the first to allow women to vote, while Ecuador (1929) was the first country in Latin America to enact women's suffrage. Today, women are still considered nonvoters in Saudi Arabia, and only gained suffrage in Kuwait in 2005.

Certain ethnic groups have also been prevented from entering the electorate. Like African Americans, African minorities around the world have been notoriously restricted to nonvoter status, such as in Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and South Africa. Until recently, indigenous populations were excluded from the electorate in Latin American countries such as Ecuador, Honduras, Paraguay, and Peru, either through formal definitions of suffrage or with the use of literacy tests. Other historic examples of nonvoting ethnic minorities are the Hmong in Laos, the Roma in Greece, and Serbs in Croatia, many of whom still face restrictions on voting.

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