There have been a number of proposals to increase participation in the electoral process in the United States, such as making voting day a national holiday, changing the day of the week to Saturday and/or Sunday, but congress has steadfastly refused any such measures hiding from their own cupidity behind a curtain of tradition.. Arguably the fewer voters there are the easier it is to swing an election one way or the other. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of papers, books, blogs, editorials, studies, etc. on this very topic.
In my home state of Texas, the far right wing extremists in the legislature, have led the state to spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to reduce access to the ballot box, and defending their patently racist laws through the federal courts only to get slapped down again and again until we are one again teetering on the brink of a federally managed electoral system. You might well ask where the money for all the law suits comes from and sadly ther answer is much of it comes from reduced state support of schools, and programs for economically disadvantaged children. There may be light at the end of the tunnel, a credible movement in the GOP to put forth a more moderate candidate in opposition to the darling of the extreme right, the freshman senator from Texas Ted Cruz. (Unverified rumor has it the Senate Republican caucus is helping fund the movement.)
Oops, I still haven't climbed down from my soapbox — I would apologize, but I am not a proponent of lying either.
If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?
