What is Voter Apathy and Why is it So Harmful?

On a lovely September afternoon, I stood in front of the door of a house I had never seen before, waiting for a resident I had never met to answer. As an intern working for the Rishi Kumar for U.S. Congress campaign, a huge part of my role is to canvass doors, which means that I go from neighborhood to neighborhood knocking on doors, pitching why Rishi Kumar is worth their vote for the next U.S House of Representatives election. When the door opened, I immediately introduced myself and explained why I was in front of their house. As part of the survey portion of the pitch, I asked them if they knew or heard of Rishi Kumar, they answered “no.” That didn’t pose too much of a problem. However, when I asked them who they voted for in the last congressional election, if they were comfortable sharing, they asked “what election?” His opponent, Anna Eshoo, is the incumbent congresswoman of the district. It was revealed that the person whom I was pitching to not only did not know who their congressperson was, but further, did not vote at all. I thought that this was just merely a situation that I would encounter from time to time. However, from the summer of 2021 to February of 2022, nearly a third of voters whom I encountered responded that they either did not vote and/or did not know their incumbent congresswoman.

I became curious if this was also a pattern that many canvassers working for the campaign encountered. So, I reached out to Mr. Rishi Kumar himself regarding the issue, and he was kind enough to give back a response: “When people do not cast their votes, our policies and elected officials do not accurately represent our nation. The freedoms of democracy have been hard-won, we need to honor those who sacrificed for this right/privilege by diligently casting our votes.”

California, for one, has experienced a strikingly low voter turnout during this year’s primary. According to statistics, just over 14% of California voters who received a mail-in ballot had chosen to cast their ballot in the 2022 US primary election. Though that number has recently risen, not only in California but in the US as a whole during the 2022 midterm elections, it still trails behind numerous other countries. In addition, during local elections, whether in California or not, meager voter turnouts prevail - according to the National Civic League, the average ranges from 15 to 27 percent.

When discussing voting and its importance, we cannot leave out the word “democracy” and its hard-won history in the United States. Democracy is a privilege that many nations do not have. Unlike some nations that give their citizens little, if any, say on their governing officials, the United States gives its citizens the right to vote in order to elect their leaders. While the right to vote should be considered a privilege and a right, and arguably a duty, many people choose not to exercise this hard-won right.

The meaning of politics has greatly changed throughout history. In early American society, politics was seen as a tool for advancement, amplifying voices and listening to those voices. Through that, politics is one of the factors that has helped shape the birth of the United States. Although we could say the same things about politics in the modern day, politics can be seen as something totally different nowadays.

Many of our politicians indulge in thousands, sometimes millions, of money that comes from corporations and lobbyists that are seeking to influence the politicians’ views on issues. This immensely distracts them from listening to the citizens, who may hold less power than those who entice the elected officials with money. Politics was once about listening to the public and citizens having their voices heard, no matter how much power that they hold. Now, the meaning of politics has been tainted by a kind of a money game that has been formed.

Now, the question is, what is causing voters to hold off on casting their votes? There are some causes that are inevitable, such as voter fatigue - in which elections are thought to be held too often - and registration problems, where a would-be voter’s criminal records as well as constraints with voter ID laws does not allow them to vote. However, an evitable cause is alienation, where a voter believes that they are insignificant to the political system and that they cannot affect the actions of the government, thus coming to the conclusion that casting their vote would be meaningless. However, the political system affects us more than we think. The government decides the amount of taxes we pay and what they will do with that money, approves major constructions that could be happening right across the streets of our homes, manages the public education system that 90% of American students attend, determines the minimum wage, and so much more. In other words, the government affects a lot of areas in our lives, and therefore, voting gives us the power to decide if those decisions are what is best for us.

So the follow-up question for that may be, how will a vote matter if it is merely a one small part of a humongous sea of other votes? First off, there have been instances where elections end in extremely narrow margins. Take the Bush-Gore election of 2000, where after a recount in Florida was triggered when Bush won the popular vote there by a razor-thin margin, Bush won Florida by 0.009%, or just 537 votes. Just a couple more votes would have completely changed who our president would be between the years of 2000 and 2008. Similar could also be said about the Trump-Clinton election that took place in 2016. In addition, your vote can speak so much about what one stands for. By voting, even if the side that you voted for does not win, you are still standing up for something that you truly believe in, and giving support and attempting to bring change.

In the United States, we have the power to change voter apathy by researching our officials and casting our ballots. Voting is a vehicle for us to combat the power-hungry nature of politics, fighting back against the large corporations and greedy politicians alike who attempt to strip us of our power as citizens. As Albert Einstein once said, “The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.”