More Americans watched the Super Bowl in 2010 than voted in the midterm elections. Only 19 million less Americans watched the Super Bowl in 2012 than voted in the presidential election, roughly a 0.5 percent difference when measured against the country’s total population.

Let's let that sink in. 

We have entered an era of unprecedented political apathy in the United States, especially when compared to the unprecedented volume with which everyone yells about the nation’s supposed demise. In 1960, 63 percent of the population voted in the presidential election (note: all figures for voter turnout are measured in terms of VAP. VAP is the Voting Age Population of a country. The other numbers often used in this debate are the percentage of registered voters who cast a ballot, whereas VAP includes those who have not registered and gives us a measure of the nation as a whole). In 2012, voter turnout dipped to 54 percent. In comparison, the lowest voter turnout the United Kingdom has had since 1945 was in 2001 at 59 percent, and out of 17 elections in that time frame, turnout has only been under 65 percent (a rate greater than the highest turnout America has had in the same time frame) twice. 

However, we can’t base a judgment of our political activity on only one other country. So, let's look at our other Western compatriots and how often voter turnout has been under 65 percent, the number to which we’ll round the highest United States turnout in the past 70 years. 

- France: Three times. 

- Germany: Never under 70 percent. 

- Italy:  Never under 75 percent. 

- Canada (gasp): Four times.

It bears pointing out that for both France and Canada, those low numbers have largely occurred in the most recent elections. Which brings us to the problem: Millenials (my generation) and Generation X. It has been widely mentioned how well Barack Obama brought out the youth vote in his two presidential races. In his 2008 victory, the youth vote only made up 19 percent of ballots cast and youth voter turnout was actually two percentage points lower than in 2004.

The youth vote is described as those between the ages of 18 and 29. As the drop in voter turnout extends further back than my generation has been of voting age, I feel comfortable offering Generation X a seat at the table when it comes to responsibility, or an apparent lack thereof. In the 2012 presidential election, there was a 15 percent drop off in the youth vote. Two years prior, in the 2010 midterm elections, only 20.8 percent of eligible youth voters cast a ballot, as opposed to 40.8 percent of those voters over the age of 30 (to say nothing of the embarrassment of the number that is 40.8 percent).

I am part of a generation that beats its chest over Occupy Wall Street, the legalization of same-sex marriage and the move away from fossil fuels (you’ll notice there seems to be less chest beating for conservative victories, although I suspect that’s because outside of gun rights there haven’t been many lately). I am part of a generation that is louder about the issues than any in memory and yet can only get one out of every five of its members to vote, a generation that by 2015 will make up a full third of the electorate.

In 2008, if my generation had only voted at the same rate as other age groups, an additional seven million ballots would have been cast. In 2008, less than half of the 18 year olds in the country were registered to vote; not less than half voted, less than half took the three minutes to even give themselves the option. It seems clear that someone who isn’t voting also isn’t volunteering. That means that not only is my generation not voting at an unprecedented rate, we aren’t volunteering for campaigns, we aren’t doing anything about the issues and we aren’t writing our representatives to tell them whether we approve or disapprove of how they are representing us. This is a country and population constantly claiming “greatest on earth” status, yet doesn’t care enough to vote for, or campaign for, or write to the people who are charged with helping us hold onto that mantle. 

“America is the greatest country on earth.” How often do we hear that statement? America has made it our mission to spread democracy around the world. We hold the belief that democracy is the only just form of government and the quality of life is far superior under a democratic government than one run by a dictator. There’s one major problem with our desire to spread democracy: we don’t seem to believe in how democracy actually works. Democracy, described by Merriam-Webster as “government by the people” has this funny way of needing people to vote to actually work well. If the people don’t show up to participate in a democracy, that democracy will neither reach its true potential nor represent the people it is meant to. 

Lack of democratic participation is not confined to the Millenials and Generation X. I have pilloried my own generation enough up to this point that it is worth mentioning my disappointment is not reserved only for those of us under the age of 30. In 2010, 38.5 percent of all eligible voters cast a ballot, and that constituted an increase in participation. In what other aspect of life do we champion 38 percent success? Grades? Nope. How well your kid shoots free throws? Not unless he’s Dwight Howard. Body fat percentage? Not even in this country.

I mentioned earlier that in the 2012 presidential election, only 54 percent of the country cast a vote. In this great country, scratch that, this greatest country, only 54 percent of the people consider it worth their time to vote for the president. It seems that as our stated goal overseas is to spread democracy, something we apparently love just enough to not participate in, it is fair to compare the voter turnout in our own political process to a handful of other nations we would never describe as “greatest”; if only to see how much we outflank them in our love of democracy and our right to be the ones spreading it worldwide.

Percent of VAP who voted in most recent election (rounded to whole numbers):

- The United States of America: 54 percent

- Afghanistan: 30 percent

- Argentina: 77 percent (compulsory voting)

- Australia: 82 percent (compulsory voting)

- Brazil: 81 percent (compulsory voting)

- Cambodia: 76 percent

- El Salvador: 62 percent

- Guatemala: 70 percent

- Japan: 60 percent

- Kenya: 56 percent

- Mongolia: 56 percent

- Niger: 45 percent

- Sierra Leone: 77 percent

- South Africa: 77 percent

- Turkmenistan: 85 percent

- Vietnam: 99 percent

I picked those fifteen other countries at random, with the criteria that I wanted to span the globe. Exactly two of them have lower voter turnout than the United States. Two! Australia, South America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Northern Africa, Eastern Europe, Western Europe and Asia all have consistently higher voter turnout than the United States. Where do we get the idea that we should be the ones spreading this great system known as democracy? Why did we decide we have the right to teach the world how to govern, when our voter turnout rate is near identical to that of Mongolia and Kenya? Where did we get this belief that we should be traversing the world to teach people about their right to vote when apparently we find that right less meaningful than literally every other part of the world? 

What part of 54 percent shouts “greatest” to you? What part of 54 percent says we should be the ones to teach the world about this system? I find myself concluding that I live in a country populated by people who think because they paid $12 for an Old Navy t-shirt with the stars and stripes on it made in Bangladesh (79 percent voter turnout in Bangladesh, just by the way) they’ve done their democratic duty. 

If we really want to talk about what is wrong with this country, why we should be embarrassed by the way it is run, this is where we should start. Not with abortion, not with guns, not with campaign finance reform, not with anything FOX News or MSNBC told you today. If we really want to talk about what is wrong with this country, we should remember that for a democracy to work as intended people have to participate in that democracy. We speak so often about spreading our system of government around the world that apparently we haven’t found the time to look in the mirror and realize all we’re really telling people is “do as I say, not as I do.” 

We have reached a point where our conceit and arrogance preclude us from actually being a part of what made this country unique when it was founded. We are so busy looking at the Fourth of July as an excuse to eat hot dogs and drink Budweiser and be “AMERICAN” that we have forgotten what our Independence Day is really about. We have forgotten the Fourth of July is as much a day of remembrance as it is a day of celebration. It is a day to remember the men who founded this country and those who followed after. Men, women, black, white, military and civilian whose ideals we spend far more time bastardizing than following; whose ideals and sacrifice earned us the right to vote, to which we respond “who cares.”

The Super Bowl traditionally lasts four hours. By comparison, in Arlington Texas (population 374 thousand people) during the 2012 presidential election, only eight percent of people reported they had to wait more than 150 minutes to vote, otherwise known as 90 minutes less than you spent watching the Super Bowl. I’ll accept here that those 150 minutes (for eight percent of people, nearly 50 percent reported their vote taking less than 60 minutes to cast) don’t include the time it takes to learn about the candidates. In return for that acceptance, let's all agree that the remaining 90 minute difference between how long we all watched grown men beat the crap out of each other trying to hold onto a piece of dead pig and the longest it took someone to vote, is a far greater amount of time than most people spend choosing a candidate. Heck, with a waiting time of two and a half hours in some places, people could go stand in line to vote knowing absolutely nothing and proceed to kill two birds with one stone by reading about the candidates while waiting, especially in a world with faster access to more information than ever before.

I set out to write a column that was supposed to end with my telling you that I support compulsory voting, much like is present in Argentina, Australia and Brazil. The ballot would include a “none of the above” choice to satisfy those who say they don’t vote because no candidate represents them. Quick tangent to those who use the “I don’t like any of them” reasoning for not voting:

1. There’s more than one thing to vote on. In fact, a large number of the things on any given ballot are presented as a yes or no proposition; no I am not willing to offer you a “maybe” option.

2. No candidate will ever perfectly represent you. 

3. Using freedom of speech to justify your right to not vote is all well and good, but if you’re not voting how would you ever know whether or not we were all deciding if we should get rid of your freedom of speech?

Back to the point I was making. If you don’t vote in Brazil, you receive a fine measured as a portion of the minimum monthly wage, you can’t receive money from the government (watch how quickly this one increases an American desire to cast a vote seeing as some half of the country is receiving government assistance), you can’t borrow from any credit institution with government involvement and you can’t renew your passport or ID card. I was going to write a column based on the idea that for democracy to be effective, more than 54 percent of the people it represents have to participate in it. I set out to tell you that there are very few things I want more for this country politically than for more than half the people to actually care enough to vote.

There are days I feel like I am fighting a losing battle going into this career, not because people disagree with me most of the time but because at the end of the day it doesn’t matter what anyone writes or says about politics if people just don’t care about them.

Because last year a whole half a percent more people answered the question, “who should be the next leader of the free world?” than answered the question “Giants or Patriots?” I’ve always seen sports as a happy release from the real world for a couple of hours. That belief has been challenged as of late because it seems to me half the country isn’t even paying attention to the real world; if they were, with the state it is in now, they would find it impossible not to go cast a vote to change it. 

Has it really come to this? Has our world become so small, our frame of reference so diminished, the voice of our leaders so muted that we consider it our birthright to be greatest? We are a living dichotomy: a nation enamored with rah-rah-ing our proclaimed greatness instead of participating in and furthering it. We are a congregation of historically apathetical people whose words preach a new chapter of Manifest Destiny with our government moving outward instead of westward, yet all the while our actions betray the falsehood of our voices.

We think because those who came before us made great strides we are guaranteed the same. We are lazy, complacent, and incapable of identifying the fact that those who came before us only made great strides because they were aware of their civic duty and democratic obligation. We are guaranteed life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We are guaranteed those things because a handful of individuals stood up and said no to being taxed without their voices being heard. The United States of America was founded because our forefathers believed their right to a vote to be so important they were willing to face the wrath of the greatest power on earth to guarantee it; a right we find less important than the halftime show.

My country votes less than Italy, France, Germany, the UK and Japan. Aside from the Soviet Union, which no longer exists, The United States has lower voter turnout rates than any of the other major players in WWII. Yet here we are, throwing around words like "greatest," preaching the merits of what those who came before did to earn us the right to cast a vote, and disparaging most of the world for not living our lifestyle. There are days I feel like I am fighting a losing battle going into this career because I set out to write a column on how sad it is half the people of this country (in a good year!) aren’t voting. I set out to write a column urging the people of my country to vote; instead, I end up worried as to what would happen if a nation of people who are more concerned with a football game than their democracy actually did.

 

Reach Columnist Calum Hayes here; follow him here.