The word mandate has been thrown around a lot recently. What do you consider a mandate?
Is it a mandate if someone wins an election with 49.81% vs. 48.34% of the vote?
Is it still a mandate when you realize 90 million of those eligible didn’t vote? According to the University of Florida Election Lab, about 245 million people in the United States are eligible to vote. When you look at the numbers, that means about 32% of eligible voters set the national agenda.
Does that count as a mandate?
We’ve got a similar situation here in Idaho. In District 33, about 49% of eligible voters are registered. Is it a mandate if a legislator is elected by 24% of eligible voters? Does that mean the legislator is mandated to introduce legislation written by outside special interests and focus on legislation aimed at less than 1% of the population?
These numbers tell me one thing: There’s not a mandate.
What we have is a lack of participation.
I hear people complain all the time about how unresponsive the government is. Someone recently complained to me about last year’s library bounty bill, which resulted in changes to who can access certain materials. He also complained about the librarians, and I stopped him.
“This isn’t on librarians. Our state legislators passed this bill, and the librarians are doing their best to avoid a bad actor suing the library into closing.”
He told me he had no idea and doesn’t pay attention to politics. He isn’t even registered to vote. I told him he has no grounds to complain. Unlike many other people in our area, he only has to work one good job to get by and has sufficient free time to become educated on local issues and policymakers.
Thomas Jefferson famously pointed out that our democratic republic needs informed and engaged citizens to survive. He also believed citizens need sufficient time and resources to participate.
We don’t have that. We have a large swath of the public who could vote but don’t. Our citizenry is remarkably unengaged. Part of it is due to a loud group of extremists that make participation unpleasant. Want to run for office on a platform of incremental progress? These extremists will attack your character. I talk to people all the time who are afraid to run for office because they fear for their jobs or businesses. One of our candidates, right here in Idaho Falls, had his children threatened and his home shot at.
There are other barriers as well. Idaho’s wages are famously low. Who has time to participate when they’re working two jobs and need to help the kids with homework and get to soccer practice? And how many people can afford to take time off from work to pay to attend a luncheon and listen to their elected officials?
This isn’t a mandate. We live under a minority government elected by less than one-third of eligible voters.
Miranda Marquit, Master of Business Administration, is a nationally recognized writer, speaker and financial expert. She is the vice chair of the Bonneville County Democratic Central Committee.