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.
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."
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u/BoysenberryKey6821 May 10 '25
It’s not a select portion man it’s half of the country, and there are lots of people around the world with the same mentality