13NFL1-Compulsory Voting Page 124 of 163 www.victorybriefs.com INDIVIDUALS ARE UNLIKELY TO GIVE MUCH THOUGHT TO THEIR VOTES BECAUSE THEY DON’T BELIEVE IT COUNTS. Tia Ghose 12, [LiveScience Staff Writer, "Why 40% of Americans Won't Vote for the President,
LiveScience, November 5, 2012.
But beyond the inconveniences, there's another reason many people in the US. may skip the polls an individual's vote doesn't count for much, because the opposing party can stymie the president's political party,
said Lyle Scruggs, apolitical scientist at the University of
Connecticut."The chance that your vote determines the outcome one way or another is very, very small" Scruggs told LiveScience.While that's
true in any large democracy, it's even more characteristic of the United States, he said.Only a fraction of candidates are up for reelection every cycle, and a Democratic president's agenda maybe sidelined
by a Republican Congress, or vice versa. Ina parliamentary system, by contrast, the person who wins the prime minister position is part of the majority party and consequently has more power to enact apolitical agenda. That means a winning
vote has more political impact, he said.Choosing the president through the Electoral College, rather than via popular vote,
may also reduce turnout, he said.Because only a few states are competitive, most presidential campaigns dump money into
10 swing states and spend almost no time campaigning in the other 40, Scruggs said."If we had a popular-vote
election of the president, where which state you lived in didn't matter, you would likely see many more national campaigns trying to mobilize a much more national constituency" he said.
