During a Tuesday night speech in San Diego, Bernie Sanders claimed that the United States has one of the lowest voter turnouts of any Democratic country on Earth. Sanders’ comments came after lambasting the American democratic process for curtailing voter’s rights and efforts to make voting more difficult. His full comment:
“Today, the United States has, sadly, one of the lowest voter turnouts of any major country on earth.”
Politifact went about researching the claim and found it to rate “Mostly True.” They cited a Pew Research Center study from last May, which rated America 31st of 34 developed countries on voter turnout, with 53.6 percent. Countries like Belgium and Turkey, which have compulsory voting laws, ranked at the highest of the list at 87.2 percent and 86.4 percent respectively. Countries with automatic voter registration, such as Sweden and Germany also ranked higher than the United States.
This comes on the heels of Sanders’ defeat in Arizona, where some supporters were forced to stand in line for five hours before casting their ballots. Many standing in that line already knew the announced result of a Clinton victory, but stayed to vote in order to have their ballot counted. This incident has led Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton to call for a federal investigation in a letter he wrote to Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
Stanton’s letter claimed that the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office cut down on the number of polling places, particularly in the minority-majority city of Phoenix. Phoenix saw one polling place allocated for every 108,000 residents, while Cave Creek/Carefree saw one for 8,500 and Paradise Valley had one for every 12,000 residents. Stanton also cited several other state regulations designed to disenfranchise voters. Sanders called the long lines in Arizona a “disgrace” and added:
“We do not know how many thousands of people who wanted to vote yesterday in Arizona did not vote.”
The United States lacks both automatic voter registration and compulsory voting laws, making registration an individual responsibility. This could be problematic for Sanders, who stated Wednesday that turnout among young, progressive voters is crucial for him to win California. California has seen low voter turnouts in the last several elections and young voters particularly lag behind other age groups when it comes to turnout.
Featured Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr, available under a Creative Commons license.
