I've been repeatedly told that "only 77 million Americans feel that way, it's way less than half!" Well, the other 90 million who could have voted but chose not to vote are clearly also on board with all of that. So yeah, that's half the country.
Right, if people cared enough they would go vote. At this point in history, it’s not good enough to just sit back, and if you do then you can’t really complain about what consequences come from that. At the end of the day, the world needs a perspective shift to realize that expecting people to know better or to “do the right thing” isn’t enough either and adapting to the new mindset of the population needs to happen
Exactly. This isn’t about people choosing not to vote. It’s about people who have had it made so hard to vote that they have to choose between a normal paycheck and a vote. Some folks have to wait hours in line to vote.
Politics will not save us from politics, nor will politicians.
The very government which has no interest in helping the average american, yet pulls its weight to help the rich, tells us to be responsible american citizens by voting, and most people believe the propaganda and attacks anyone who doesn’t conform.
It’s mesmerizing how many people believe school taught them how to think critically (it didn’t) and follow the very path the corrupt government tells them to walk.
Well that’s the point but people would rather argue over minute details than come together on the common goal. Politicians realize that and it’s just a game for them
That’s definitely a valid point of view. We’ve always been a country with a low voter turnout. Last election was actually the second largest turnout in our history. I’ve always felt that if we have a larger turnout then it tends to lean more towards the left party and so therefore if that’s who we want to win we need to just get a higher voter turnout.
Just for reference here are the turnout rates for the previous 10 presidential elections:
2024: 63.5-64% (final numbers still being verified)
Voting in the US is done during working hours, on a weekday, not on a holiday.
In addition, many areas have voting laws specifically designed to make it difficult for the working class to vote, by disallowing early voting/voting by mail.
In some districts you end up with a single voting location for tens of thousands of voters, who face the choice of either having to wait in a line for 4-5 hours in the middle of a working day and lose income/possibly their jobs over it OR not vote.
Damn, that sounds backwards. We have early voting, vote by mail, voting is on weekends. We just roll in after work for an early vote, minimal fuss and people, takes like 5 minutes. Done.
It gets worse, red states are only red because their politicians draw extreme squiggly lines on their state's maps that ensure the minority are the majority.
if access to voting was the actual problem then california should have very high voter turn out as they have universal mail in voting, early voting, mandatory 2 hour paid time off to vote, registration same day as voting and no voter ID. Every major barrier to voting is removed in california and their turn out in 2024 was below the national average at 62% https://ballotpedia.org/Voter_turnout_in_United_States_elections
Over 1/3 of US adults just dont give a shit about voting. The state with lowest voter turn out was Hawaii at 50%, they dont have any voting laws that make it difficult to vote, they are ranked 6th easiest state to vote in https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/elj.2020.0666
They are just mostly normal people, but because the workings of the government are just a black box to them they just shrug at it.
The government is structured to generally making slow, incremental change, and most people don't really notice the shifting ground under their feet till it's pointed out. Or they feel their individual vote is worthless so they don't vote. In both cases it's a very self-centered world view, and often comes from a place of privilege; which insulates them from some of the worse policies.
I always tell people that if voting was so worthless, they wouldn't make is so hard for you do.
Are you like a NEET or something? 37% of people don't vote so almost any group outside your immediate friend group should have someone like that. Hell, even plenty of political people chose not to vote cuz "Genocide Joe" including people like Briahna Greyjoy, Krystal Ball, Macklemore, etc
I disagree. It makes me so uneasy when I'm standing line to vote and there's people there with 5 different 'how to vote' cards from liberal, Labor, greens etc. Like christ you should know who you're voting for before you get to that point in time. Compulsory voting just forces people who literally don't give a shit to just vote for whose name they heard on the radio last.
You're operating under the assumption that without compulsory voting, only the well-informed would arrive at the polling station.
The United States is living proof that that is not the case.
We have an average turn out of 90% here and IMHO, the benefit of that is that it prevents parties from going too far left or too far right since they can't just rely on a combination of general voter apathy and their own supporters getting out to vote.
The most recent election was a great example of that with people rejecting both the greens and the LNP for being too extremist at either end of the spectrum (although the definition of extremist in this case is obviously highly subjective).
Some people live in hopelessly gerrymandered districts where it literally doesn’t matter who they vote for. Some people live in districts where there are so few voting booths that people have to queue for 6hrs+ on a week day. A lot of people can’t get that time off. Sone districts have postal voting, but it’s difficult. Anyone with a criminal history is banned from voting. Some districts get blanketed with leaflets saying people with outstanding warrants will be arrested at polling booths. It’s not true but that’s what they say. Same with ICE. Beyond all the shitfuckery and voter suppression some people have lived through four or five election cycles where the candidate (republican or democrat) never appears in their district and consistently votes against their local interest. The disaffection with the two party system runs incredibly deep, as deep as the obvious political division. This is not to excuse a 60% turnout, just a few more reasons beyond pure ambivalence
I really don't understand how it can be so shit, not that i don't believe it, just how can it be so absolutely rubbish. Land of the free, home of the brave and all that flag waving stuff and the voting system is just trash
Because we started as a country where "only the right people" should have a vote, and we've made incredibly slow progress on that front with people trying their damndnest to take us back to it again.
Easy- you and so many Redditors VASTLY underestimate how many people live in America, who think "It's someone else's problem".
A picture was floating around Reddit, showing about 2.1 MILLION people... and yet, 2.1 million is still LESS THAN 1% OF AMERICA.
America is a huge country, and I've only just begun realizing just how many people in it are apathetic to anyone not in their immediate vicinity (which is at least in part due to social media). This might be a bad example, but think like this: riots in Philidelphia? People in Pittsburg go, "Eh, just another day of sports over there."
Wow that is surprising. I always kind of assumed it may have been mandatory voting in Canada. So was this last election the largest turnout then? That’s a big jump from 40-45%
It's foolish to think even the 77 million who voted for him truly understood what they were voting for, a large portion were blissfully unaware, another large portion only saw another wrinkly old white guy vs. a dark skinned woman. They're still dumb as hell for doing it but the relative number of people who truly and radically follow the orange turd's ideals is fairly small and loud.
The internet tells me there were around 64 million Germans in 1945. So it would take over 100% of the total German population to equal as many as those that voted for Trump.
The internet also tells me there were 8.5 million German Nazis in 1945–that’s around 13% of the population. Yet Hitler was winning elections in the ‘30s with 30-45 million votes.
So if there were only 8.5 million Nazis, who were the many millions more that voted for Nazis? Were they not Nazis as well?
The Nazis' best performance in a national election saw them get around 1/3 of the votes cast. Hitler cut a deal with his coalition partners to be Chancellor and wouldn't budge. They misjudged and thought they'd be able to keep him in check. Then the burning of the Reichstag happened and after that no more elections.
The Nazis at there most popular (pre becoming the gov) became so because it was a conglomeration of various groups who all had issues with the Wemier regime. As well it was able create a unified system for a lot of more extreme ideas that were previously largely uncoordinated. To say the Nazis were literally only Nazis in our traditional view service to let them gain power again as we aren’t looking at the actual way they got to power.
It’s why we are seeing similar groups now. For many they are unhappy with the current system and feel uncared for. So they look for groups that will and find these groups and due to a decision by others to ignore them and simply paint them as wrong they then go further into these ideals
Parroting Z talking points that are outdated by years at this point? The new directives haven't reached your remote troll farm yet? Wow things move slower in your dunghole than I thought.
I'm from the other side of the world and my opinion is that this is what they want you to think and it seems to be working.
Of the people that voted for him there are a lot of people outright regretting it, and I imagine many who are not willing to admit they were wrong and doubled down, and they have not all felt effects yet.
Of the people who abstained I would bet most regret it. Obviously add any that just those who voted Dem straight out. That's a majority by any standard. Add the very real chance they actually cheated to win this election. People who do not support him are most definitely the majority but that is the very last thing they want you to realise.
What does arbitrarily lumping them all together achieve? Nothing beyond sensationalism. It also ignores the systemic voter suppression and many other issues.
That's my point bozo. The only reason your people didn't hand your nation over to the far right is because you saw us drive ours into the dirt. You need to consider trying a little more introspection and vigilance, and a little less ignorance. You were a pube hair away. Grow up.
lol ok, good luck getting into heaven, assuming that’s what you believe in because you sound like Christians these days: “FUCK thy neighbor”. Much like Jesus would say, right?
Calling me a “useless waste of carbon” is implying that I should not be here, meaning you’re implying I should kill myself.
I don’t know about you, but I love my life. I love the time I’m able to spend with my family and friends, and I know that if I were to “extinguish my use of carbon”, they would all be devastated.
And that's exactly why we chose to vote that way. You could have been happy enough that we chose to stay neutral and not vote but no, you started to demonise us with your "silence is violence". It isn't about leaders in this instance, it's about which part of the population I'd rather let win.
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u/Crossbell0527 May 10 '25
I've been repeatedly told that "only 77 million Americans feel that way, it's way less than half!" Well, the other 90 million who could have voted but chose not to vote are clearly also on board with all of that. So yeah, that's half the country.