By Daniel Potter and Dylan Simburger
Potter is the co-director of the Houston Population Research Center at the Kinder Institute for Urban Research. Simburger is a research analyst at the center.
In late 2025, we asked Houston-area residents: Is democracy, even with its flaws and imperfections, still the best form of government?
This is a question that political scholars and philosophers have debated for millennia. To date, democracy is the only form of government that has emerged in which power is derived from the people it serves, so for that reason our answer is “yes.” Yet, we found one-third of Houston-area residents disagreed, and that is a problem.
As a constitutional representative republic, the United States is an indirect democracy that elects representatives who make and enact laws governing our lives. Voting is the way people directly contribute to our democracy, yet among eligible voters, only 43% of Harris County residents cast a ballot in the 2022 midterms and 59% participated in the 2024 presidential election. Both rates were down 9 percentage points from the election four years prior.
Research and surveys have found many factors have contributed to a local and nationwide decline in voter turnout, such as a lack of civics taught in U.S. education and a decline in voter access that has hit Harris County especially hard.
For example, more than 70% of Americans lack basic knowledge about civics, according to a 2024 U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation study. Additionally, voting initiatives in Harris County that had been aimed at expanding citizens’ access — such as 24-hour polling places and drive-thru voting — were outlawed by the Texas Legislature in the name of election security (despite no evidence of expanded access being associated with voter fraud).
Getting the county's electorate engaged in the democratic process is essential for the long-term health of democracy. While local leaders and advocates use several strategies to “get out the vote” in local communities, our new research finds that two less-often-discussed factors — voter identity and voting intention — play an unexpectedly important role in turnout.
Using survey data from more than 4,000 eligible voters in Harris County, we found that voter identity (the degree to which a person identifies with being a voter) and voter intention (an individual’s stated commitment to cast a ballot in an upcoming election) ranked as the strongest out of 25 predictors of whether a local resident participated in recent elections.
Our survey found eligible voters with weak voter identity only had a 58% likelihood of casting a ballot in the 2024 presidential election, while those with a strong voter identity had an 87% likelihood — meaning if I see myself as a voter, I vote, and if I don’t, I don’t.
Taking action on voting
Boosting voter turnout is notoriously difficult. Potential voters often grapple with time constraints, a lack of interest in the political system and other challenges that get in their way of voting.
Our research shows that policies and programming to activate voter intention in the short term, along with investments in strengthening voter identity in the long term, can improve people’s commitment to and participation in U.S. democracy.
Most immediately, local leaders and advocates can give more opportunities for people to express their intention to vote. This could be done through voter pledges, assistance with creating voting plans and other resources that help people to form concrete voting commitments.
These may seem like small acts, but their impact can be substantial. In our research, our way of getting people to signal their intention to vote was simply having them check a box on a survey. Even that step was estimated to produce tens of thousands of additional votes in Harris County elections.
At the same time some of these more immediate actions are taken, we can undertake the harder work of building people’s voter identity.
We can uplift civic education and situate it squarely as a core curriculum in schools to increase education about democracy, the democratic process and voting. As of 2024, Texas was one of 31 states that only required a single semester of civics class in high school, according to a working paper from the American Bar Association’s Task Force for American Democracy.
Texas requires 68 hours of driver's education — roughly equivalent to one semester of a high school class — before teenagers can legally drive a car, meaning we spend about the same amount of time teaching a teenager how to handle a vehicle as we do preparing them to steer our democracy.
In addition to creating voter intention and investing in voter identities, we can also put our energy into enabling people to get engaged instead of reducing their access to the ballot box. Easing access to voting — whether through expanding voting hours, mail-in ballot availability or poll locations — doesn’t mean making elections less secure. Rather, it means providing more ways for eligible voters to exercise their right as a citizen and establish their voter identity.
Choosing hope
At a time when many people are angry, frustrated and distrustful of government, even doubting that democracy is the best form of government, all of this may seem like a lost cause.
But the most important quality of a democracy is also what can help save it: Democracy places its power in the hands of the people. We, the people, have an opportunity and obligation to let our voices be heard, to make sure our interests are served. Restoring the health of our democracy and people’s faith in our system will not happen in a single election cycle, but the work must start somewhere.
So let’s not feel hopeless about the democratic process. Let’s choose hope, and let’s back it up with action. Let’s start seeing ourselves as voters and making real, active commitments to show up at the ballot box.
High early voting turnout for this year’s midterm elections provides an important indicator that our democracy is still alive and many residents are activating their most powerful tool within our political system. We can use this moment to motivate as many people as we can from intention to action, and further cultivate their identities moving forward.
Take action and build your voting plan
To help move from intention to action when it comes to voting, below are several nonpartisan resources for building a voting plan for the upcoming election:
- Harris Votes: Check voter registration status, find polling locations near your home or work and preview personalized sample ballots.
- Fort Bend County Elections/Voter Registration: Check voter registration status or register to vote, find polling locations near your home or work and watch a livestream of ballot processing.
- Montgomery County Elections: Check voter registration status or register to vote, find polling locations near your home or work and sign up to be a poll worker.
- VOTE411: Enter an address to build a custom voting plan, see candidate responses to key issues and double-check local deadlines.
- VoteTexas: Review approved photo IDs, check early voting schedules and verify state voter requirements.
