Why We Should Care about Apathy (From a Modern Perspective)
While I have instilled the idea that I feel apathetic towards politics, I thought it would be important to include some current information and get out from last week’s blast from the past. This post will focus on a more statistical review of apathy instead of statements from myself critiquing archaic ways.
Taking a look at some more recent statistics from the Pew Research Center, “The 55.7% VAP turnout in 2016 puts the U.S. behind most of its peers in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, most of whose members are highly developed democratic states. Looking at the most recent nationwide election in each OECD nation, the U.S. places 30th out of 35 nations for which data is available” (DeSilver). For a country with over 338 million people, 55.7% isn’t very representative, especially when considering that this statistic is decreasing as the population is growing. 30 out of 35 is shocking for the United States, who usually is a front runner for everything: from an original capitalist nation to a leader in obesity rates.
Npr.org reports that, “In the highly competitive 2016 presidential election, voter turnout ranged from 42 percent to 74 percent depending on the state, averaging 59 percent nationwide. Battleground states experienced higher turnout, on average.” But why focus on the 2016 election? Well, I couldn’t vote, but I thought it would cause mass uproar. It clearly did diminish political apathy, but not in a useful way whatsoever. Media was crazed and once again blown out of proportion, but the memes made during this time are still pretty funny though.
Now, it’s important to highlight what the cause of this issue is. It’s not like I can control it, but I have a newfound curiosity as to why all this is happening.
Here’s one reason: Americans don’t feel represented. When politicians pull crazy stunts and have so many scandals, why would people want to replace them with someone who could be potentially worse? I feel like this has happened and no one has done anything to rectify this never-ending cycle. This certainly deters me, since politics shouldn’t be considered picking between “the lesser of two evils.” Npr.org quotes Megan Davis of Rhode Island, who said, “I feel like my voice doesn’t matter…People who suck still are in office, so it doesn’t make a difference.” I would agree with Davis here, though I find her language and choice of words amusing.
My second piece of evidence lies with voting barriers placed. The reason why people aren’t voting is because they can’t. “In 2016, 4 percent of registered voters did not vote because of “registration problems,” according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data. Many would-be voters face a range of barriers: voter ID laws, registration difficulty or criminal records. An estimated 10 percent of adults in Florida, for example, can’t vote because of a felony conviction” (Npr.org). Now, this isn’t the blog to discuss legal standards relating to criminal records, but it’s important to acknowledge that this factor is why numbers are decreasing. This physical barrier is often forgotten and bars Americans from voting, which may or may not tip political scales in an election.
A third reason that explains apathy can be ignorance. This mainly applies to younger generations who simply lack political interests or haven’t been exposed yet. Older generations are the main voters, and when their votes may seem to outnumber others, it can be concerning. According to npr.org, 74% of nonvoters are aged 18-29, with those aged 30-39 following close behind. Now, for my two readers, 74% is pretty high, and I’d like for you to consider people you think may fall in this range because they don’t know enough information about modern politics (I am one of them). To add on to this, “‘Whenever young people are surveyed, there is a significant lack of knowledge about how exactly the government works, and, therefore, how their vote actually matters,’ said Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, the director of CIRCLE, an initiative at Tufts University that studies youth civic and political participation. She recently conducted a survey of working-class youth, and found that nearly 20 percent of young people said they don’t think they know enough to be able to vote” (Npr.org). Kawashima’s research, as reported in the same article, “has found that a majority of young people don’t think voting is an effective way to change society. They also have major misconceptions about voting. Some think getting a citation for driving under the influence meant they could no longer vote” (Npr.org).
But now, let’s discuss some facts from another big kahuna of presidential elections: the 2020 Election.
“The 2020 presidential election had the highest voter turnout of the 21st century, with 66.8% of citizens 18 years and older voting in the election” (United States Census Bureau). This is an uptick in voting from the previous 55.7%, and an 11.1% jump seems pretty substantial when the United States has millions of voters. But what caused this revival? Could it have something to do with the occurring pandemic? Apparently not! The United States Census Bureau claims that, “Despite COVID-19 concerns, 155 million people turned out for the 2020 presidential election. However, 4% (552,500) of registered nonvoters reported not voting due to their concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Outrightly, the United States Census Bureau states that, “The most common reason for not voting among registered nonvoters was they were not interested in the election (17.6%). Other reasons included not liking the candidates or campaign issues, being too busy and forgetting to vote.” But this still brings us back to our question and the root of this discussion; why are people not interested in elections? Now that there’s been a general timeline of voting and political expression, in the next blog, I’ll try to include some interesting takes from our classmates as to why they choose to express political opinions or lack thereof.
Sometimes, it is acceptable to simply not care, but it’s still fun to look at all the sides.
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