Voter Turnout Is Not the Problem: We Need a Harder Metric

Everyone in the democracy business — politicians, civic groups, even journalists — treats voter turnout as the ultimate scoreboard. Get more people to vote, the thinking goes, and you've strengthened democracy. But after 2024, I'm convinced that's wrong. Turnout is a vanity metric. It tells you how many people showed up, not whether they believe the game is fair. The real problem is not low turnout; it's low trust. And if you don't fix trust, high turnout doesn't save you — it just makes the losing side even angrier.

Look at the numbers. In 2024, more than 153 million Americans cast ballots, about 65.3% of citizens — slightly below 2020's 66.8% (U.S. Elections Project). By any historical standard, that's a healthy democracy. Yet a Gallup poll fielded just weeks before the election found only 57% of Americans were confident that votes for president would be accurately cast and counted nationwide — and the partisan gap was a record 56 points: 84% of Democrats but only 28% of Republicans (Gallup). So nearly three-quarters of the losing side's voters went to the polls thinking the count was rigged. That's not a recipe for legitimacy; it's a recipe for the next January 6th.

We in the field have spent the last two decades building get-out-the-vote machines that are incredibly effective at mobilizing people. But we've ignored the deeper question: why do so many Americans — especially on the right — believe their vote doesn't count? And the answer isn't just that they're misinformed. It's that we've let the voting process become a partisan football. From the pandemic-era mail-in voting battles to the endless litigation over ballot deadlines, every procedural detail is now seen through a red-blue lens. When you attack the mechanism of voting as a partisan weapon, you can't be surprised when people stop trusting the outcome.

Turnout Is a Lagging Indicator

Consider what turnout actually measures. It's a snapshot of who voted, not why, not how, and certainly not whether they felt their vote was counted fairly. In 2024, turnout was the second-highest in five decades — the EAC reports 64.7% of the citizen voting-age population, more than 158 million ballots counted (EAVS). But that high number coexisted with record levels of distrust and pessimism. A February 2024 Pew survey found 71% of Americans say their side has been losing more often than winning on the issues they care about — including 83% of Republicans and 62% of Democrats (Pew). The winners may feel good, but the losers feel worse than ever. And since control of the government flips regularly, that resentment is always just an election away from becoming the majority's view.

So what should we measure instead? I propose a simple, brutal metric: the percentage of voters who believe their vote was counted accurately. If that number drops below, say, 70% among the losing party's voters, then your election is a failure regardless of turnout. And right now, we're failing that test.

The Trust Gap Is Not Just About the Winner

Some will argue: “The losing side always complains; that's just part of democracy.” But the data show this is different. The distrust isn't just sour grapes — it's structured and persistent. Gallup found that the share of Americans who were “not at all confident” that votes are counted accurately rose from 6% in 2004 to 19% in 2024 (Gallup). That's a tripling of hard-core skeptics. And it's not confined to one party: while Republicans are the most distrustful now, Democrats were equally skeptical in 2020 when Trump was claiming fraud. The problem is systemic, not partisan.

What drives this? Partly it's the erosion of institutional trust. Gallup's 2025 poll found average confidence in major U.S. institutions at 28%, near a record low, with Congress at roughly one in ten (Gallup). People don't trust the referees, so they assume the game is fixed. Add to that a media environment where only 30% of Americans trust the news overall (Reuters Institute), and you have a perfect storm: people are primed to believe the worst about everything, including elections.

The Real Fix: Make the Process Transparent

If I'm right that trust is the issue, then the solution isn't more registration drives — it's more transparency. We need to make the voting process so open and understandable that even a skeptic can see it's fair. That means things like:

• Universal paper ballots that are publicly verifiable
• Mandatory, well-publicized post-election audits that are open to observers from both parties
• Clear, consistent rules for mail-in ballots that don't change every cycle

Some of this is already happening. The EAC reports that nearly 100% of jurisdictions used voting equipment that produces a paper ballot or an auditable paper record in 2024 (EAVS). But that's not enough — people need to see those audits, not just know they exist. And we need to stop treating election administration as a political battleground. When one party sues to restrict mail-in voting and the other sues to expand it, the message to voters is that the process is up for grabs.

The Counter-Argument: Turnout Matters for Legitimacy

I can already hear the pushback: “If you don't get people to vote, you don't have a democracy. Turnout is the foundation of legitimacy.” True, but that misses the point. Turnout is necessary, not sufficient. A 70% turnout where half the country believes the results are fraudulent is less legitimate than a 50% turnout where 90% trust the count. And we're not going to get to trust by ignoring it. The fact that youth turnout in Michigan surged to 58% in 2024 (Tufts) is great, but if those young voters grow up thinking the system is rigged, they won't stay engaged.

Moreover, high turnout doesn't automatically translate into a healthy democracy. Look at the turnout gap between old and young: 74.7% of those 65 and older voted, while fewer than half of 18- to 24-year-olds did (Census). That's a problem of representation, but it's not the same as a crisis of trust. And interestingly, young people are already more skeptical: only 16% say democracy is working for them (CIRCLE). So we have a generation that's tuning out because they don't believe the system works — and we're responding by trying to get them to vote? That's like giving a thirsty person a glass of saltwater.

Trust-Building Is the New Get-Out-the-Vote

So here's my warning to every civic organization, campaign, and foundation: if you're spending your budget on turnout alone, you're wasting money. Start measuring trust. Run focus groups, poll after the election, ask voters if they believe the count was accurate. And then invest in programs that build trust — not just in the mechanics, but in the institutions that run elections.

One concrete example: in states like Minnesota, where turnout was highest at 75.9% (U.S. Elections Project), they also have some of the most transparent processes. But even there, Republicans have raised doubts. The point is, no state is immune. We need a national standard for transparency that both parties can agree on.

What I'd Actually Do

If I ran a major democracy funder, I'd stop funding get-out-the-vote operations in battleground states and instead fund a “trust in elections” initiative. I'd require every grantee to report not just how many voters they contacted, but how those voters felt about the election after the ballots were counted. And I'd push for legislation that mandates risk-limiting audits in every state, with results made public within a week of the election.

Because here's the thing: we can't afford a future where every election is a coin flip on legitimacy. The stakes are too high. Turnout is easy to measure, but it's not the metric that matters. Trust is. And until we start treating trust as the real goal, we're just polishing the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Sources

• U.S. Elections Project - https://www.electproject.org/
• Gallup - https://news.gallup.com/poll/651185/partisan-split-election-integrity-gets-even-wider.aspx
• Pew Research Center - https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/02/12/most-americans-continue-to-say-their-side-in-politics-is-losing-more-often-than-it-is-winning/
• Reuters Institute - https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2025/united-states
• EAC - https://www.eac.gov/sites/default/files/2025-07/2024_EAVS_Report_508.pdf