Byline: Tokyo
I think there is something stirring these days among the non-voters. I have put off doing a research project on non-voters for decades because I didn’t have a staff to work with. Maybe one of my blog readers can do the work. I’ll put up the $3,000 in out-of-pocket costs.
Measuring something people don’t do (like not vote) is a non-sequitor. Hence the research design I am suggesting.
I suggest three samples of 500 randomly chosen names from three lists. Five hundred people who voted in the last election, 500 who were registered but didn’t vote in the last election and 500 who have driver’s licenses but aren’t registered. All these lists are available in California.
To each group I will send identical letters with a $1 bill enclosed and a postcard with a return postage stamp. In each of the three groups there will be five different postcards (100 people each) with only one question. The five postcard questions will be simple, such as: “The American political system is so corrupt that voting doesn’t matter” Agree, disagree. “The way the political world operates doesn’t matter much to me, things are working well enough.” Agree, disagree.
The object is not to tally the responses to the five different postcards in the three groups (voters, registered but didn’t vote and non-voters), the object is to count the number of postcards that are returned and the type of postcards returned in each group (15 tallies).
The resulting response rates would be a statistically reliable measure of feeling about the different questions on the postcards.
I hope someone will do this study. Especially so it can be repeated over time.