Becoming disenfranchised one election at a time - US Ranks 139th in the World

Monday, August 2, 2004 at 04:15AM
TheSpook

COULD be that the world's oldest democracy is also the most complacent. Gauged by at least one key statistic, the percentage of eligible voters who actually vote, we're hardly a beacon to the world anymore; in fact, we're in 139th place. In the 26 national elections since 1945, the United States has had a participation rate among its voting-age population of an anemic 48.3 percent, according to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance. This ranks it well behind not only the rest of the First World (Italy, 92.5 percent participation for the same time period; New Zealand, 86.2 percent; Austria, 85.1 percent; Germany, 80.6 percent), but also behind such struggling, tentative democracies as Bosnia (82.8 percent), Namibia (80.4 percent), Bulgaria (77.5 percent), Belize (72.1 percent), Togo (69.3 percent), Grenada (64.8 percent), Nicaragua (62.0 percent) the list goes on. And on. [more]

Article originally appeared on (http://brownwatch.com/).