Voting: A right everyone can live with It's such an ingrained
attribute of American government that many citizens just fail to
do it. It is the right to vote. Do Americans take voting for
granted? By all accounts they probably do, particularly in off
year elections when as some put it no one "really important" is
running. For instance the 2008 presidential election had one of
the heaviest turnouts in years with Barack Obama running against
John McCain. In that election there were 231,229,580 Americans
of voting age in the country. Of that 56.8 percent (132,618,580)
voted. In Utah at the time there had 1.79 million adults age 18
or older who are citizens. Fewer than a third of them turned out
to vote. Off year elections (those not containing presidential
voting) usually do not usually even fare this well except in
localized areas where a hot issue or a race between two
controversial candidates brings out the voters. One has to
wonder about the lack of interest in any election, but
particularly off year electio