The dark side of voting in elections

According to an unpublished "kitchen table survey", conducted before last November's presidential election in the United States, about 95 percent of the predominantly Hispanic members of one of the US' largest domestic unions preferred Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton to her Republican opponent Donald Trump. Yet less than 3 percent of that union's members actually planned to vote. The reason came down to economics.

For most of the people surveyed, the costs of voting - including lost wages from time off work, transport to the polling station and the need to secure proper identification (such as a driver's license or passport) - were simply too high. This reflects a broader trend in the US, with poor people often unable to participate fully in their country's democracy.

According to the US Census Bureau, fewer than half of eligible adults with family incomes of less than $20,000 a year voted in the 2012 presidential election, whereas voter participation among households with incomes of more than $75,000 a year was 77 percent. In the 2014 midterm election, the think tank Demos reports, 68.5 percent of people in households earning less than $30,000 a year didn't vote.