pdf  Retiree News & Views - Jan/Feb 2016

Long Island retirees will participate in a voter education session on May 24 at the Knights of Columbus Hall, 1 Morton Street, E. Farmingdale.

Arecent New York Times article discussed the strategy which helped the campaigns of the two winners of the Iowa Presidential caucuses. Each campaign applied lessons of behavioral science to getting out the vote. The campaign team of Republican Ted Cruz sent out mailers warning that a low turnout was expected and indicated that recipients’ past voting record was known, graded and would be disclosed to their neighbors.

Although highly touted by some political consultants, this alarmist, neighborhood peer pressure approach was risky because it could have elicited an unintended negative response. Apparently, it worked for Cruz. On the Democratic side, the Clinton campaign used a prepared script for its phone bank that asked voters about their voting plan — the time and way they intended to get to the polling sites — with the intention of encouraging them to commit to voting. The Clinton camp devised its carefully worded script to use phrases that evoked civic responsibility and informed those called that turnout was expected to be high as additional motivation. The campaign strategy worked here too.

Voter turnout is traditionally high for adults 65 and older, and actually rose in the last Presidential election to 71.9% from 70.3%in 2008, despite the surge in voting for President Obama among younger voters. In fact, young adults had the poorest voting record, just 21%, and adults, ages 25 to 64, voted at only 37%. As for the increase in senior voting, part of it has been attributed to the rise in the number of people who are now in the 65-plus age group, the fastest growing demographic in America.

Indeed, as baby-boomers age and increase in numbers, the senior share of the electorate rose by 6%, while younger voters share declined by the same 6 percent.

There are other noteworthy voter trends as well. For the first time ever, black voters exceeded white voter turnout, 66.2% versus 64.1% in the last presidential election, and voting among Latinos, despite a huge population increase which resulted in more than 2.3 million people being eligible to vote, actually decreased by nearly 2% to only 48%. And women vote 4% more than men, 63.7% versus 59.7% for the age category of below 65, but after age 65, the reverse is true.

Despite the fact that there are so many examples of people in other nations fighting for the right to freely elect their representatives, here in America — with voter turnout that dropped from 40.9% to 36.3% in 2014 —it is clear that we still have a lot of work to do to educate and motivate more citizens, from all age groups and other demographics, to vote.

The Retiree Division, in conjunction with the League ofWomen Voters, is taking on this formidable challenge. We will be conducting voter education seminars and registration drives in Brooklyn, the Bronx, Long Island and Florida. The goal is to help people better appreciate this hard-fought-for right, basic to American democracy, and to fully understand why every vote counts.

Brooklyn retirees look forward to a voter education seminar on May 20 at the Sheepshead-Nostrand Houses, 2264 Bragg Street, Brooklyn.

Queens retirees’ voter education session will take place on March 30 at the South Jamaica Houses, 109-04 160 Street, Jamaica.