Scott Duke Kominers, Columnist

Low Voter Turnout Isn't Necessarily Bad

Democracy doesn't need everybody's ballot, just a representative sample.

October 11, 2016 at 2:00 PM UTC

Scott Duke Kominers is the MBA Class of 1960 Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and a faculty affiliate of the Harvard University department of economics.

It's not a numbers game.
Photographer: STEPHEN MATUREN/AFP/Getty Images

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It’s election season, so it’s time to bemoan low voter turnout. Americans do not vote in numbers comparable to the citizens of other democracies, we’re often reminded. Then the laments start: Low turnout is a sad commentary on the state of the republic. This year could be even sadder because many people don’t like either of the main parties’ presidential candidates.

For sure, low turnout can be a sign of voter frustration. However, for low turnout to distort the election result, it must be that the people who do show up at the polls don’t accurately represent the views of the citizenry as a whole.