„No, we didn’t vote in the last election. We are Jehovah’s witnesses and Jesus Christ is our government!” say the two women friendly and go on eating their Chinese food under a tree. Even after two days of surveys and interviews, including answers like “I didn’t vote because I lost my polling card” and “Voting is for old people!” this sentence still is surprising.

Everybody knows something about Jehovah’s witnesses. Maybe thanks to the media, maybe thanks to smattering, or thanks to their own magazines “Awake” and “Watchtower”.

You know, they refuse blood transfusion, they calculate the end of the world twice a year and they walk from door to door, ringing doorbells and trying to sell their newspapers. Only few people know that they refuse to celebrate heathen feasts, including Carnival and even their own birthdays.

But the small sentence “Jesus Christ is our government” is something new. Because many Jehovah’s witnesses actually don’t take part in elections or any other kind of political activities. The reason is, they think any governmental institutions are brooked and authorized by God, so they accept the force of the state and respect laws and governmental allowance, but every time the state’s expectations are not comparable with their understating of the bible, it gets complicated. They refuse military service and any other things that might be adoration for the Country like singing the national anthem.

Since the late 90ies Jehovah’s witnesses are officially “allowed” to go and vote, an article from “Watchtower” says:

„Being instructed by the Bible, every witness decides himself on the basis of his conscience and understanding of his responsibility towards God and the State if he wants to go and give his vote to any candidate on the list or not.“

What is also interesting is that other religious communities, sects and associations either vote for extremist splinter parties or don’t take part in elections to protest. The only ones who refuse voting because they regard Jesus Christ as the Government are the witnesses.

We have heard of many reasons why people vote and why not. But we still find it irritating that, in the open-minded EU, who is always trying her best at separating church and politics, religion is a reason not to go and vote.

They say that voting is a right and a duty in a democratic state. However, not all citizens go and vote in France, for example some young people do not vote… Who are they?

Those who do not trust politicians and politics in general, those who do not receive enough information. But there are also persons who use it as a way to protest, to say that something is going wrong in society and that they do not want to participate in this system.

Which is quite surprising is that no one cares about nonvoters; we only have some statistics and critics after the elections but apart from that… NOTHING! As a consequence, we do not know who nonvoters are, why they do not vote and if they could be potential voters if something changed in politics.

Nonetheless, some politicians try to attract their attention using media and creating political blogs on the Internet.

The French are in general more interested in presidential elections, maybe because they are more informed. Since 2002 we have noticed a radical change in behaviour as more people have been trying to play a part in political life.

Voting or nonvoting is a personal choice, but we have to be aware that it will have an impact on our lives.

Thomas Kleinhenz—in his book “Reasons for the decline of turnout”—offers one of the most detailed typologies of nonvoters, taking into account their socio-economic status, political interests, party identifications, values and participation behaviours.

Seven types of nonvoters, but no young people | Photo by Darwin Bell on Flickr

Kleinhenz distinguishes seven types of nonvoters, each labelled with a self-explanatory name. While these do not represent homogeneous groups, you may be able to identify one or more of these fictitious characters among your neighbours and acquaintances…

• Active post-materialists
• Upper-class conservatives
• Isolated disadvantaged persons
• Passive uninterested persons
• Saturated middle-class people
• Individualist yuppies
• Disappointed workers

The decisive motives of these different types of nonvoters for their abstention are related to ineffectiveness, individualism, alienation, disinterest, satisfaction, self-centredness or dissatisfaction – all of which can—on their own or in any given combination—be valid and comprehensible reasons for different participation behaviours.

Typologies of nonvoters largely ignore young people.
New research is needed.

And yet, like most other typologies, Kleinhenz’ model does not relate strongly enough to young people—in particular those young people aged 16 to 25—representing an increasingly large proportion of nonvoters.

His typology—and, in fairness to Thomas Kleinhenz, all others that currently exist—does not apply to today’s young generation.

We need new research engaging with the characteristics and motivations of young nonvoters!

Had I ever thought about non-voters before? Probably not. Why? Because why in the world should I focus on people, who consider (or don’t) voting important? Does anybody really care about them? No way – I thought before. But now I know that before I didn’t know what I had been talking about.

Of course there are a lot of people who care about ‘choiceless’. The great example may be this famous project in Berlin, which has recently taken place. However, the point is that before this event I didn’t know a lot about non- voters. NOW, when I can talk about them through the whole day…I am even more confused. WHY? Because there are so many reasons (why there are non-voters), so many examples (who are the non–voters), so many consequences (of non–voting) that I just do not know… how to discover various aspects of choiceless&voiceless. If I could, I would use X-ray examination to explore them, but I think it wouldn’t make any sense. In my opinion even the best scientist hasn’t got a clue about WWW – Why, Who, Where.

Is it complicated?
…maybe…
a little bit…

So I can give one illustration which presents why the problem of Choiceless & Voiceless is not so easy to understand. But firstly, I must warn every person who is already reading my article: after seeing this column, you will still not understand C&V. But you’ll understand me, at least.

Formally we have two groups of non-voters: the first part is the people who don’t consider voting important, and the second group consists of people who use non-voting to express their protest against the government. But if you think that’s all about them, you will be surprised. Why? Because many non-voters seem to be more mysterious. For instance, they neither protest against the government nor consider voting unimportant. They may have no information about politicians, they may loose the letters with candidates, the may forget that elections are on Sunday, not on Monday, they may be under 18, they may be in another country. What is worse – it often isn’t their fault. But who is responsible for such a situation then? We talk about diminishing turnout, we walk streets to encourage people to take part in the elections and immediately we hear that somebody is under 18!!! Dear parents, please – try to give birth earlier, that when we finally ask someone ‘did you vote in the last elections’, he or she could find a better reason for non-voting than ‘I am under 18’.

I’ve just shown the first example, why examining non-voters may be such difficult work. The second example may be appropriate to change people’s mind on the streets. Actually I was trying to find out, how many people met in public places consider voting unimportant. Well, I asked: “Did you vote in the last elections?” And what is amazing – almost everybody answered: “Yeah, of course, it’s very important”. And after some time, I decided to tell people that we are doing a project about non-voting, so we are looking for non-voters and, even more amazingly, I heard from most of people: “I didn’t vote…”

Good accident? Maybe.

Or maybe people just lie all the time to make me feel even more confused.

And finally, the third example why non- voters cannot be understood is me. Yeah – I didn’t vote in the last elections, because…yhm…I was in another town, so I didn’t know a lot about my local candidates…(as if I weren’t able to type into Google ‘local candidates from district…’.

Yeah, I must admit – I was just lazy and that means that I cannot be considered as a part of any group presented by me. Maybe there are more people like ‘me before’.

Because NOW – I can proudly say – I am a voter! I want to express my opinion, I wonna change something in my country and on my continent. And I can quote one man met on the street in Berlin:

“You should go and vote, because, as you live in the European Union, you have to know that the European Union’s Parliament takes decisions which affect all of us living in the European Union.”

Is it complicated?
…maybe…
a little bit…

I can’t explain this – now – it is your vote, your voice, your choice.

* * *

The turnout of federal elections after 1989 in Germany decreased. In the 1980s average turnout was about 83%, however in the 1990s it decreased to 79,6% and to 78,4% in the 2000s. We can observe a similar development in other European countries. Turnouts were the highest in Luxemburg (91% in the last European elections) and Belgium (90,04%).

The reasons of low turnout are different but common for every country. In the early 1990s in Germany it depended on the new political situation. According to political scientist Prof. Dieter Roth from Heidelberg University, when the unification of Germany became a fact people thought that everything was decided and arranged, so they could not influence anything. Another reason is that citizens are dissatisfied with democracy, parties and political personnel.

But scientists say that it is very hard to find the accurate number of non-voters and their sociological structure. PD Dr. Dorothée de Nève said this is because people lie. The real turnout is almost always different from citizens’ declaration and it is almost always lower. They feel ashamed that they did not go and vote. And this is not a strange behaviour – it is common to reproach non-voters with their attitude.

But let us have a look at non-voters sine ira et studio. First of all, people think that the importance of elections is different on different levels. The newest research lead by Heidelberg University shows that more than 80% claimed that federal parliament elections are important while less than 60% said that European elections are important as well. According to Prof. Roth this is because people do not know enough about the European Parliament (EP). EP is complicated and they do not know that EP’s decisions have a big influence on local statements. Even journalists do not have enough information.

Comparing the turnout of the European level and the federal one it appears that the last one is estimated much higher in the hierarchy of importance. Until 2009 in Germany the turnout of European elections was less than 45% while turnout of national elections (2006) was almost 80%. National elections on the same day can also increase European elections’ turnout. In Lithuania, for example, the combination of national and European elections turnout was in 2009 27,5% higher than before.

The biggest problem is a lack of identification with parties. According to surveys presented by Prof. Roth party identification decreased from about 45% in 1976 to near 30% in 2008.
For the other political reasons considered by scientists it is not true that people are not interested in politics. They are just disappointed with political parties.

We spoke with Dutch journalist Laurens Boven and with some other people in Berlin (tourists, German people, young and old people). We asked a few questions and wrote a little summary of their answers.

Q. What do you think, who are the nonvoters in your country? Are there any special groups?

Most of peoples said that in their country there are no special groups. People don’t go and vote because they think that the politics is not important. It’s usually low educated people who don’t care about voting and these people think that politicians can’t change their life.

Q. Who is responsible to encourage people to go and vote?

They said that first of all family is really important because if they have traditions, this can influence young people’s attitudes. After that the level of education plays a role and the third thing is religion. But the media impress the world and the people. ???

Q. And what about school?

Laurens Boven: “Yes, school has a big influence, now we have a lot of projects about politics at school to teach children about voting. I think it’s good but most non-voters are between 21 and 25, and at this age a lot of these usually don’t go to school.”

Q. What do you think about the Europien Union (EU)?

People usually think that the EU is a good thing, because they have more possibilities, for example in the economy and in education. But other people said that the EU is not as good because it is too big. Therefore the media play a significant role in the life of the people.

Q. What do young people think about Dutch media?

Laurens Boven: “To be honest, people don’t mind. Politics is not as prominent here as in America. People are interested in the media only before the elections and they listen for just a few minutes. The youngest who are interested identify with a party.”

Q. What would you like to say to a non-voter?

Laurens Boven: “I don’t think non-voters are right to complain, and I think it isn’t good for democracy. In a democracy you do participate, vote to say: I DON’T LIKE YOU (THE POLITICANS) AND I AM NOT HAPPY!”

Professor Dieter Roth | Choiceless Project Seminar

Using the example of the recent elections to the European Parliament, Prof Roth argued that too many politicians were caught in local and national issues, which consequently dominated the public opinion much rather than any of the many European themes.

Political interest has not decreased; the interest in traditional political parties has.
Professor Dieter Roth

The limitation of the political discourse was reflected in most media as well – still devoid of a truly European public space, national media happily picked up on the range of topics evading any of the real discussions around Europe.

Political interest, however, is not the only factor for people not to vote. Satisfaction with democracy is one other strong aspect influential in this regard – as well as protest, which has become an increasingly dominant factor.

(We will introduce the different factors in more detail soon!)

One tremendous problem is the disregard of blank votes—also known as white votes, a form of protest against the available selection of choices or candidates—which most countries do not count as valid and therefore turn into void votes, much rather than to accept them as a legitimate expression of disagreement with and disapproval of the presented options.

Another major issue relates to the unbelievably high numbers of citizens and residents that are systematically excluded and denied the right to vote – in many European countries between a quarter and a third of the population.

Photo by tiffa130 | flickr

Take the case of the recent elections to the Parliament of the European Union, often referred to as the European election. Of the roughly 500 million people living in the European Union, approximately 375 million were eligible to vote – around 75 % of the Union’s population had the right to vote, and the remaining quarter was excluded from the start.

Of these 375 million eligible voters, less than half actually went to the polls – only 43 % voted.

All in all, 338 million people living in the European Union did not—or could not—make their voice heard in these elections. That’s a whopping per­centage of 67.6 % – more than two thirds of the people living in the EU.

In other words: less than a third of the people living in the Union have determined the power constellations in which the political parties and their personell are now allowed to continue taking decisions that effect all the 500 million Europeans.

And yet: nonvoting is not a problem of democracy at large; it is a problem of political parties. Fiddling with the numbers, on the other hand—as currently practised by those very same political parties—that is a problem of democracy.