In order to vote in school elections in Lowville, you need only be a citizen, have lived in the district for 30 days, and be over the age of 18. Concerned that the turnout at recent school elections has been quite low, with only about 20 percent of eligible voters coming to the polls, school officials have discussed changing the regulations to require that voters be registered with the board of elections, as they must be for a general or municipal election. They posit that voters who are registered are already committed to the electoral process and thus are more likely to come to the polls for school elections as well.
Examine the logic of this argument by discussing what questions would need to be answered in order to decide whether the prediction and the argument on which it is based are reasonable.
The author argues that changing the eligibility criteria of voting in school elections should result in an increase in voter turnout. However, there is little evidence on which this decision is based on and the argument is rife with holes and assumptions. School officials could employ methods to promote voting turn out rather than to change the eligibility criteria.
Firstly, changing the criteria may or may not have an effect on the number of voters. While it may be true that people registered with the board of elections, may be more committed to voting, it would not necessarily change the absolute number of voters. This is because it may still be the same set of people casting their votes. In effect, this only changes the total number of people eligible to vote rather than having more voters. This restricts voting and makes it less democratic. In addition to this, it is not necessarily true that people who register with the board of elections are committed to voting. It takes hardly any time to register to vote as most things now a days is a click of a button away on the internet. This means that registered voters may still not show up to cast their vote and so the percentage of eligible voters would still be very low. In addition to this, school elections are considered less important, specially when compared to municipal or general elections. While people may be more committed to the electoral process, they may not need to avail of schools or have an interest in voting in school elections and so changing the eligibility criteria does not change the overall voter outcome.
Changing the eligibility criteria changes the target audience for voting. For example, in the UK, in order to be eligible to register with the board of elections, one does not have to be a citizen of the UK, one could also be a citizen of the Commonwealth. Furthermore, if Lowvilles general election criteria includes a broader group of people, the total number of people eligible to vote would in fact increase. But this may result in even more people not showing up to the polling station. For example, international university students in Lowville may be eligible to vote in a municipality or general election but would have no reason to vote for the school elections, despite being eligible to do so. This would result in lower turn outs.
It may be wiser to promote the importance of voting among the already existing group of people eligible to vote as that is the group that is the most directly impacted group of people, instead of broadening the target group or trying to restrict it by weeding out the people uninterested in the voting process.
On the whole, the argument would benefit from examining more statistics and examine other ways to increase voting outcomes, such as promoting the need to vote, rather than changing the voting criteria as that makes voting less restricted and may in fact, reduce the voter turn out.
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Comments
Essay evaluation report
Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 4.0 out of 6
Category: Good Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 0 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 21 15
No. of Words: 506 350
No. of Characters: 2388 1500
No. of Different Words: 196 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.743 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.719 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.511 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 182 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 120 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 88 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 42 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 24.095 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 12.298 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.667 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.339 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.504 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.066 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5
Grammar and spelling errors:
Line 3, column 618, Rule ID: ADVERB_WORD_ORDER[9]
Message: The adverb 'hardly' is usually put before the verb 'takes'.
Suggestion: hardly takes
...f elections are committed to voting. It takes hardly any time to register to vote as most th...
^^^^^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 675, Rule ID: NOW_A_DAYS[1]
Message: Did you mean 'nowadays'?
Suggestion: nowadays
...time to register to vote as most things now a days is a click of a button away on the inte...
^^^^^^^^^^
Line 3, column 679, Rule ID: A_PLURAL[1]
Message: Don't use indefinite articles with plural words. Did you mean 'a day' or simply 'days'?
Suggestion: a day; days
... to register to vote as most things now a days is a click of a button away on the inte...
^^^^^^
Transition Words or Phrases used:
also, but, first, firstly, furthermore, however, if, may, so, still, while, for example, in addition, in fact, such as, on the whole
Attributes: Values AverageValues Percentages(Values/AverageValues)% => Comments
Performance on Part of Speech:
To be verbs : 21.0 19.6327345309 107% => OK
Auxiliary verbs: 23.0 12.9520958084 178% => OK
Conjunction : 14.0 11.1786427146 125% => OK
Relative clauses : 10.0 13.6137724551 73% => More relative clauses wanted.
Pronoun: 27.0 28.8173652695 94% => OK
Preposition: 81.0 55.5748502994 146% => OK
Nominalization: 10.0 16.3942115768 61% => OK
Performance on vocabulary words:
No of characters: 2452.0 2260.96107784 108% => OK
No of words: 506.0 441.139720559 115% => OK
Chars per words: 4.84584980237 5.12650576532 95% => OK
Fourth root words length: 4.7428307748 4.56307096286 104% => OK
Word Length SD: 2.58592665587 2.78398813304 93% => OK
Unique words: 202.0 204.123752495 99% => OK
Unique words percentage: 0.399209486166 0.468620217663 85% => More unique words wanted or less content wanted.
syllable_count: 785.7 705.55239521 111% => OK
avg_syllables_per_word: 1.6 1.59920159681 100% => OK
A sentence (or a clause, phrase) starts by:
Pronoun: 10.0 4.96107784431 202% => Less pronouns wanted as sentence beginning.
Article: 3.0 8.76447105788 34% => OK
Subordination: 3.0 2.70958083832 111% => OK
Conjunction: 1.0 1.67365269461 60% => OK
Preposition: 8.0 4.22255489022 189% => OK
Performance on sentences:
How many sentences: 21.0 19.7664670659 106% => OK
Sentence length: 24.0 22.8473053892 105% => OK
Sentence length SD: 69.9648113692 57.8364921388 121% => OK
Chars per sentence: 116.761904762 119.503703932 98% => OK
Words per sentence: 24.0952380952 23.324526521 103% => OK
Discourse Markers: 6.28571428571 5.70786347227 110% => OK
Paragraphs: 5.0 5.15768463074 97% => OK
Language errors: 3.0 5.25449101796 57% => OK
Sentences with positive sentiment : 9.0 8.20758483034 110% => OK
Sentences with negative sentiment : 7.0 6.88822355289 102% => OK
Sentences with neutral sentiment: 5.0 4.67664670659 107% => OK
What are sentences with positive/Negative/neutral sentiment?
Coherence and Cohesion:
Essay topic to essay body coherence: 0.210824040725 0.218282227539 97% => OK
Sentence topic coherence: 0.0738573175045 0.0743258471296 99% => OK
Sentence topic coherence SD: 0.0590038222029 0.0701772020484 84% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence: 0.122837772927 0.128457276422 96% => OK
Paragraph topic coherence SD: 0.0568248936553 0.0628817314937 90% => OK
Essay readability:
automated_readability_index: 13.5 14.3799401198 94% => Automated_readability_index is low.
flesch_reading_ease: 47.12 48.3550499002 97% => OK
smog_index: 8.8 7.1628742515 123% => OK
flesch_kincaid_grade: 12.7 12.197005988 104% => OK
coleman_liau_index: 11.15 12.5979740519 89% => OK
dale_chall_readability_score: 7.98 8.32208582834 96% => OK
difficult_words: 101.0 98.500998004 103% => OK
linsear_write_formula: 11.0 12.3882235529 89% => OK
gunning_fog: 11.6 11.1389221557 104% => OK
text_standard: 11.0 11.9071856287 92% => OK
What are above readability scores?
---------------------
Rates: 66.67 out of 100
Scores by essay e-grader: 4.0 Out of 6
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Note: the e-grader does NOT examine the meaning of words and ideas. VIP users will receive further evaluations by advanced module of e-grader and human graders.