I was a bit confused about what the “Voter Count” section of the linked post was trying to say. It brought up the (entirely valid) point that a like-for-like comparison of turnout percentage between 2022 and 2023 is not representative due to the change in the number of eligible voters, but then appeared to focus on the equally unrepresentative percentage change of the number of eligible voters as a proxy for election quality, which isn’t really a meaningful metric on its own due to the major procedural changes to how eligible voters are counted—something which I don’t see mentioned anywhere in the post.
A much more meaningful number to focus on, I would think, would be (as the section title suggests) the voter count, i.e. the total number of people that actually voted (vs. just those who were counted as eligible to vote). However, I don’t see that mentioned in the post, other than the statement:
Regardless of the efforts we’re putting in, at least from within my community and also from within the D&I Workgroup which I am part of, we can’t seem to get a steadily increasing voter count year-over-year.
In fact, the numbers in the presented in the post show the voter count is actually generally increasing year on year:
| Eligible | Turnout | Voters | Error | YoY Change | Cumulative |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1151 | 0.40 | 460 | +/- 6 | - | - |
| 1538 | 0.38 | 584 | +/- 8 | +27% | +27% |
| 1459 | 0.39 | 569 | +/- 8 | -2.5% | +24% |
| 877 | 0.70 | 614 | +/- 5 | +8% | +33% |
While of course these data do not establish any casual relationship (nor correlation), it would seem to anecdotally suggest that perhaps the efforts of yourself and others to broaden participation in PSF elections might potentially be more fruitful than you’ve realized 