Non-voters

So… I keep seeing posts like “how could these Trump voters be so awful?” and “I bet those Trump voters are sorry now that the leopards are eating their faces” and “how can we engage Trump voters in productive dialog?”

But I also see graphs of turnout like this:

Bar graph of Democratic vs. Republican vs. non-voter “participation” in presidential elections since 1976, showing the major “participating” fraction each time was non-voters, except for 2020, when the pressure was very high.

And I read stories like this: https://herereadthis.blog/2025/04/02/does-higher-turnout-now-help-republicans-a-data-driven-analysis-of-partisan-turnout-dynamics-part-1/

And I see orgs like this: https://braverangels.org/

And I think, “any conversation should include non-voters.”

Democracy is one of the things that make us great, isn’t it? We’ve long heard it said that choosing not to participate is, in fact, participating, so those folks should be at the table, right?

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