Annotated Bibliography
Cizmar, A. M. (2016). Why bother? Apathy in the American electorate. In B.A. King & K. Hale (Eds.), Why don’t Americans vote? Causes and consequences (pp. 51–59). ABC-CLIO.
This chapter was written by Anne M. Cizmar, and it provides extensive information on the psychological aspect of citizens’ unwillingness to vote. In the article, the author presents her views on the subject and shows the link between people’s lack of motivation during presidential elections and the overall apathy of the population. She claims that this outcome is primarily conditional upon the lack of knowledge of Americans since they have no idea how the government works. The author’s credibility is explained by her teaching experience in American politics since she is an Associate Professor in the Department of Government of Eastern Kentucky University.
This information is extremely useful for the purposes of the speech, as it will serve as the underpinning of people’s decisions. It will allow contrasting citizens’ lack of motivation with gruesome consequences deriving from such an attitude. Moreover, the psychological part of the topic will be an excellent complement to the facts and statistics used in the speech in order to persuade people to pay particular attention to the problem.
Leininger, W. M., & Gupta, P. (2020). One hundred years of women’s suffrage: Health care advocacy, and why we vote. Obstetrics & Gynecology, 136(2), 349–353. Web.
In the article, Leininger and Gupta (2020) demonstrate the problem of the lack of citizens’ activity during elections by contrasting the current rights of women and their struggle to gain them in the past. They claim that this problem is directly connected with the field of healthcare since the political participation of representatives of this population group correlates with the emergence of an individualized approach to their medical needs. From this perspective, the rights of women to vote and their active use would indicate the increased attention to specific aspects of their lives. This information is credible due to the expertise of the authors in obstetrics and gynecology since they are practitioners from the Naval Medical Center in San Diego.
The conclusions of their article will be beneficial in terms of demonstrating the negative impact of the neglect of the need to vote for a specific category of citizens. It can be added to the overall problem in the country and used as an analogy for other population groups. In this way, it will be possible to emphasize the undesirable effect of such conduct and prove the necessity for all American citizens to vote.
Morgan, S. L., & Lee, J. (2017). The white working class and voter turnout in US presidential elections, 2004 to 2016. Sociological Science, 4, 656–685. Web.
This article presents the statistical data and facts about voter turnout in US presidential elections and shows the difference in the attitude of various classes to the problem. Its authors are professors of the Department of Sociology at John Hopkins University, and this fact contributes to the credibility of information included in it. They are primarily focused on the consideration of the white working class behavior during elections. Thus, Morgan and Lee (2017) make a conclusion on the necessity to consider such individual factors as belonging to ethnic groups or classes while analyzing their behavioral patterns.
The inclusion of this article in the speech will allow to bolster the situation with facts and statistics, which will add to its overall reliability. Moreover, these data will serve as the basis for qualitative information from other sources and help conduct an analysis with the consideration of both percentages and human factors. In other words, the experience of people who refuse to vote will be presented not as an abstract issue but a real problem.
Wright, B. (2019). Martin Luther King, Jr. lecture – “Give us the ballot”: Reflections on the struggle for the right to vote in honor of the 90th birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Villanova Law Review, 64(3), 339–345.
The article written by Brenda Wright presents the history of the struggle for the rights to vote of the African American population of the country. The author, a professor of Villanova University Charles, Widger School of Law, discusses the development of the movement that led to the signing of the Voting Rights Act. She writes about the principal reasons that motivate this category of citizens to fight for their rights, thereby providing valuable information on their intrinsic considerations.
This article will be useful in order to complement the outcome of the similar processes for women of the country and their influence on the general well-being of American citizens. In this way, it would be possible to apply the facts and statistical data to more than one population group, and this method will draw the attention of a more significant number of people to the problem. Thus, the analysis of the issue of voting rights and citizens’ decreasing activity with the help of this article will emphasize the need for a change.
Speech
From the problems of communities to global governmental issues, present-day politics addresses all aspects of the country’s life. However, most people seldom make a correlation between their everyday struggles and the decisions that are made by political leaders. This stance consequently leads to their inactivity as citizens and results in the neglect of such an essential procedure concerning global decision-making as voting. It seems strange to me that we, the people of the twenty-first century, can easily overlook the cause and effect relationship between the election of appropriate candidates and our quality of life. Even though the principal struggles for the right to vote are in the past, the upcoming challenge of indifference can bring even more gruesome consequences to the general public.
The researchers have noticed a gradual decline in the number of eligible voters that have actually participated in the elections over the past decades. What is more significant, the neglect of this part of societal life is typical for all ethnic groups and classes without exception. Thus, for example, the percentage of white collars decreased from 25.3 to 24.9, and the number of politically active working class representatives dropped from 12.8 to 12.2 (Morgan & Lee, 2017). The situation is already alarming, but it is even more serious for farmers and agricultural workers, whose participation declined from 0.6 to less than 0.1 percent from 2012 to 2016 (Morgan & Lee, 2017). These statistical data clearly represent the lack of attention of citizens to the elections and, consequently, their own well-being.
It is especially surprising to me considering the long history of the population’s fight for their rights to vote. The tendency to neglect this duty of every citizen looks like an attempt to devalue the efforts of our ancestors to establish a favorable environment. From this perspective, the fight initiated by Martin Luther King, Jr. and suffragists is not appreciated by the people. Meanwhile, the indifference towards their successes indicates the unwillingness to take control over their happiness. The African American activists devoted their lives to the idea to create a better future for their offspring (Wright, 2019). Women fought for the right to vote to ensure the provision of high-quality medical services to them (Leininger & Gupta, 2020). Regarding these motivations, it is unlikely that well-being and health became unwanted in the present-day world.
However, the decline in percentages of eligible voters that exercise their rights and the lack of interest in societal problems speak for themselves. From this point of view, I can assume that the intentions of citizens concerning the improvement of life are merely of theoretical nature. Everyone wants a better life, but no one intends to participate in its creation. As a result, there is a risk of the emergence of various problems. If they are not addressed in a timely manner by those politicians who had the intention to make a change but were not supported by voters with similar interests, society suffers.
This situation is described by specialists examining the problem of decline in the activity of citizens during elections. They refer to this phenomenon as societal inertia or apathy in the electorate, and it is caused by a number of factors (Cizmar, 2016). Hence, the main excuses of people who decide not to vote are related to the lack of understanding of how the government works and, therefore, their role in this process (Cizmar, 2016). These circumstances lead to the absence of motivation among voters to study the complicated registration procedure and other requirements that would allow them to make an impact on society by actively participating in it.
On the whole, if we continue to ignore the role of citizens in the elections and the interdependence of the government’s efficiency and people’s happiness, society risks facing significant problems. The possibility of such an outcome is defined by the fact that only representatives of various population groups know about their needs. If they fail to communicate them, no one will be able to resolve the issues related to different spheres of their lives. Thus, by encouraging people to vote, we create a better future for the next generations and harm them tremendously by refusing to do it.
References
Cizmar, A. M. (2016). Why bother? Apathy in the American electorate. In B.A. King & K. Hale (Eds.), Why don’t Americans vote? Causes and consequences (pp. 51–59). ABC-CLIO.
Leininger, W. M., & Gupta, P. (2020). One hundred years of women’s suffrage: Health care advocacy, and why we vote. Obstetrics & Gynecology, 136(2), 349–353. Web.
Morgan, S. L., & Lee, J. (2017). The white working class and voter turnout in US presidential elections, 2004 to 2016. Sociological Science, 4, 656–685. Web.
Wright, B. (2019). Martin Luther King, Jr. lecture -” Give us the ballot”: Reflections on the struggle for the right to vote in honor of the 90th birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Villanova Law Review, 64(3), 339–345.