OMAHA, Neb (KMTV) — They say you can take a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.
When it comes to elections you can provide a voter with a ballot — but that doesn’t mean they will turn it in and civic advocates think they might be close to narrowing down why.
“Our hunch is that is has at least as much to do with the community dynamics of connection and confidence in institutions as it does with the personal responsibility of going to the ballot box,” said Daniel Bennet with Civic Nebraska.
It takes a lot of number crunching and demographic analysis to tie together information like median income, racial makeup, and geographic location to voter turnout but Civic Nebraska has made the job much easier with its new TROVE tool.
The tool uses information from the latest census to match demographic and voters, whether on a county, zip code, or census tract level to give a much clearer picture of who is and isn’t voting and sometimes all you need to do is cross a street to see the difference.
“We were surprised to see that we have some areas that are over 60% voter turnout and others that are not even 30% voter turnout, that is very surprising,” said Bennet.
One example that highlights this is in South Omaha. The portions of South Omaha on the Sarpy County side of the street range between 40- to 50% but cross the street into Douglas County and that number drops to 26%.
“That might indicate that there is a lot we need to talk about as far as why that might be the case. Does it have to do with connections or confidence in institutions?” said Bennet.
The tool is also going to be invaluable in discovering if Nebraska’s recent voter ID requirements will lower voter turnout even more.
"I am really hoping the new voter ID requirement doesn’t negatively impact voter turnout too severely, but looking at other states and the course of history. we know it's a possibility. So, we will do everything we can to educate and assist voters to get ready to meet those requirements next year,” said Heather Engdahl, director of voting rights for Civic Nebraska.
Anyone can access the TROVE Tool for free by heading to civicnebraska.org
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