The Importance Of Voting In Brazil

Improved Essays
What can be noticed though is an effort by the United States to decrease the cost of voting (C) through means such as online voter registration and mail-in/early ballots as well as a general trend in many elections of campaigns sending the message that people should get out and vote because individuals votes are important, although mathematically they do not, increasing the perception that the votes matter will most likely draw some number of new voters. In the case of the another large Democracy, Brazil saw a 78.9% voter turnout in the 2014 presidential elections. The reason for this higher turnout can be closely tied Brazil’s mandatory voting laws. The law requires all legally eligible citizens to vote, and failure to comply with the compulsory …show more content…
One strategy I would propose, which many campaigns have utilized, would be to get celebrities and well-liked public figures as spokespersons talking about the importance of voting. While many may not buy into this, connecting voting and politics to something other than just politicians and policy may help people have an increase in the intrinsic benefit of voting, because if public figures they respect and admire are saying voting is right and a civil duty, that message is more likely to resonate and send people to the polling place if it coming from a respected perspective rather than another directly political figure. Furthermore, if many famous voices are relaying messages about the importance of voting, voting and taking part in politics bleeds farther into social and popular norms, thus increasing the direct extrinsic benefits of voting. The second variable I would focus on would be (C), that is the cost — time and effort — of voting. I would look to decrease (C) by one identifying countries that show trends of relatively low voter turnout, and offering transportation services — shuttles — to people in those areas on election day. Although an individual Get Out the Vote campaign could not create a law, I think a second way that would greatly help to decrease the cost of voting would be to make Election Days national holidays. If schools, all government …show more content…
A government could also make corruption and resorting to outside options (v) less desirable by increasing the punishment for corruption and thus the risk. A way in which to increase the probability of detection (p) would be to heighten the monitoring of bureaucrats in the form of fiscal surveillance. The problem with all of these options for decreasing corruption — higher wages, heightened surveillance and punishments — all require resources which developing countries, the most common group of nations to see corruption obviously do not have an abundance of. So a way in which to decrease corruption, but that is much larger and less tangible than the above options would be to attempt to increase the dishonesty cost (D) This is more difficult because it involves shifting social norms and perceptions of corruption in a country. For example, India and the United States both have corruption. But in the case of India, it is a “culture of corruption” and many citizens accept that politicians often resort to outside source to get things done. Whereas in America, there is still certainly corruption, but the risk is much higher because there is a social cost of committing corruption in that once a bureaucrat is discovered as corrupt, their public and political identity are

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