It's interesting to hear you say that, because I was looking at some numbers to see how we can improve and maybe be a great country that has a different voting system and have great voter turnout. No matter what, historically the numbers have been declining in every single country.
Even when New Zealand turned to MMP, their voter turnout didn't go up. It fell. In 2014 their voter turnout was better than ours. It was almost 77%. In 1960 it was 90%. I can even give you the numbers for the nineties and for what it was just before it turned. It was still a lot higher than what it is today.
We see that same trend in the U.S. for the presidential election. Yes, they don't have proportional representation, but they have two candidates running, so your votes basically would count. They've declined over the years too. All the countries seem to have been in the 80th or 90th percentile for turnout in the 1960s and the 1950s. Now they're all in the sixties and the seventies, and some are even lower.
To me, it seems that regardless of what voting system I'm looking at, turnout overall is just extremely low. We need to do something about it. We need to get people engaged again. I'm trying to figure out how we engage them and get that trust back.