Study: Arkansas last in voter turnout; Rockefeller Institute seeks to engage citizens

Arkansas could enact online and same-day voter registration to improve the nation’s lowest voter turnout rates, foster discussions on public issues, and require cities to publish fiscal information online.

Those recommendations came in the Arkansas Civic Health Index, a study affiliated with the National Conference on Citizenship that was released at the Clinton Presidential Center on Monday (Dec. 4).

The report examines direct political engagement through voting, political activity outside of elections, and individuals’ connectedness with families, neighbors and communities. The primary authors were four professors from the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service and one from the University of Central Arkansas. Sources included the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, which surveys about 60,000 households across the country.

The report’s release was followed by a panel discussion and by an announcement that the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute (WRI) is launching the Civic Arkansas program, a series of meetings and listening sessions meant to engage Arkansans across the political divide. Janet Harris, WRI executive director, made the announcement.

The report found that Arkansas ranked 51st in voter participation in the 2020 presidential election, behind all states and the District of Columbia. In that election, 62% of eligible Arkansas were registered and 54% voted, compared to national averages of 72.7% and 66.85%.

That 12% difference in voting between Arkansans and the rest of the country was much bigger than the 3% gap that occurred in the 2016 election. That year, voter turnout in Arkansas was 58.7% compared to 61.4% nationally. The state’s voter turnout has trailed the national average in presidential election years since at least 1980, the first year the state’s voter turnout rates were included in the report.

Among the panelists was Jeff Coates, National Conference on Citizenship director of research and evaluation. Coates said his group created its first Civic Health Index in 2008 and has done almost 100 since then. Arkansas is the 36th state to complete an index. The national organization seeks to have one for every state and the District of Columbia.

Regarding Arkansas ranking last in voter turnout, Coates said – drawing laughter – “Think of it as a challenge, an opportunity. You can only go up.”

Women (56.2%) were more likely to vote than men (51.6%) in the last presidential election. That gender gap was smaller in 2016 (57.4% versus 59.8%). Black Arkansans (44.7%) were less likely than white, non-Hispanic voters (56.1%), to vote in 2020.

The gap in voter participation was quite large based on educational attainment, with 73.2% of Arkansans with a bachelor’s degree voting compared to 44.9% with a high school diploma and 32.3% with less than a diploma.

An outlier in this trend was that undergraduate student voting rates increased 16 points between 2016 and 2020, reaching 57%.

Only 18% of Arkansans voted in person on Election Day in 2020, the first year of the pandemic, which was about the same percentage as the national average. That compared to 34% in 2016 in Arkansas and 48.5% nationally.

The study also compared Arkansans’ involvement in other types of nonelectoral and informal political activities with other Americans. Arkansans were less likely to attend political meetings and less likely to donate to political groups. Six percent of Arkansans donated $25 or more to a political organization, compared to 9.4% of Americans. About the same percentage of Arkansans, 9.6%, contacted or visited a public official as their fellow Americans (9.5%). The most common form of political participation was buying or boycotting a product or service. In that category, 16.6% of Arkansans participated compared to 17.1% of Americans.

The report makes a number of recommendations to address the state’s shortcomings in its political and civic engagement. Possible solutions include allowing online and same-day voter registration, enabling automatic registration when obtaining a driver’s license, and allowing 16-year-olds to pre-register to vote. It also recommends having more polling locations and expanding no-excuse absentee voting.

Revising the state’s public high school civics standards to require training in civic engagement and deliberative discussion was raised as a way to improve civic participation, and the report recommended opposing efforts to make it harder for citizens to initiate ballot measures.

The report found that Arkansans had lower levels of trust in the federal government than the national average. Only 35% of Arkansans trusted the federal government to do what is right at least half the time, compared to 46% of Americans. That data came from the 2020 American National Election Studies (ANES) Time Series Study, which interviewed eligible voters between August and December 2020. Arkansas ranked 49th out of 50 states and the District of Columbia. Moreover, Arkansans were 48th in their trust of other people, with 61% saying they trusted other people at least half the time, compared to almost three-fourths of Americans.

On the other hand, 85% of the state’s eligible voters trusted election-overseeing officials at least a moderate amount, compared to 78% of voters nationally.

Other panelists at the study’s unveiling were Gayatri Agnew, who heads the Accessibility Center of Excellence for Walmart and is a Bentonville City Council member; Shana Chaplin, founding director of Arkansas State CASA; and Elaine Mayor Lisa Hicks. The discussion was moderated by Dr. Jay Barth, director of the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Museum.

Asked by Barth about the lack of social trust in Arkansas, Gayatri said trust is based on when and how a person feels included. Her office at Walmart focuses on including people with disabilities in the shopping experience.

Gayatri said it’s not that people don’t care enough to learn about a particular local issue. They aren’t involved because they are busy with their responsibilities and because governments don’t make it easy for them to be a part of the decision-making process. She said local governments should offer psychological safety for those who may not understand how a process works.

“You don’t trust someone who knows more than you,” she said. “You trust someone who listens to you. And so I think at the core of the question about trust is a question about listening, and if I could just throw every governmental institution in the state of Arkansas under the bus, I would say we’re not very good listeners.”

The report cited a study by the Arkansas Center for Research in Economics, in its Access Arkansas: Web Transparency Report, that found that counties had made great strides in publishing fiscal information online. In 2019, only 18 counties published their current budget online. By 2022, they all did after legislators passed a law requiring counties to do so by January 2020

But with no similar requirement for cities, only 34 of 112 first-class cities did the same. The Arkansas Civic Health Index calls for expanding the law to require first-class cities to publish fiscal information.