My good friend Ken Trainor is the retired managing editor of our local weekly newspaper, the Wednesday Journal of Oak Park and River Forest (IL). Ken continues on as the Viewpoints Editor and writes a must-see weekly column in the paper. Recently we had a car conversation about why people don’t vote in the United States. Ken said he had become curious about the topic, had researched it and had discovered surprising reasons for not voting – some of them baffling to me. He said he’d think about writing a column for the Journal. I urged him to write it post haste. He did so. Here’s the column: https://www.oakpark.com/2026/10/06/why-americans-dont-vote/ .
What both amazed and exasperated me in Ken’s narrative is that 36% of eligible Americans did not vote in the 2024 presidential election. “Eligible” means exactly that: they could vote if they were registered. But as Ken notes, 71 million eligible citizens have not even registered! Worse, in the last midterm election in 2022, 37 million registered voters failed to vote, citing “lack of interest,” “too busy,” “didn’t like the candidates,” “illness or disability,” “out of town,” and “forgot.” I don’t know whether to laugh or scream.
I won’t repeat any more of what Ken says in his column, which details the excuses people offer for not voting. In our discussion, Ken related that inside the excuses lurked a certain expectation that some voters have of a kind of quid pro quo: a “what will any of these candidates do for me personally?” stance. This contingent of voters seems to feel that if that benefit isn’t forthcoming, they abstain entirely. The ideas of weighing one candidate’s positional value against another’s and of making a decision based on which candidate provides most, though not all, desirable positions or promises, are ignored. To me this sort of thinking, this thoroughly transactional ideation, is corrosive. It’s probably always been a strain in American political thought, but I suspect that the purely transactional nature of the current “administration’s” policies and actions have had a material effect on increasing this sort of thinking. Appreciation of nuance and gradation doesn’t exist among such non-voters. A sense of civic duty to evaluate and vote based on the best likely representation is, for these folks, not a consideration.
But I’m gnashing my teeth. The good news is that in multiple states political parties and other organizations are waging voter registration campaigns and have signed up many new voters. We can hope that they’re reaching those 71 million eligible citizens, getting them registered, and once they are registered, continuing to encourage, even help them, to vote.
We also need to keep after those 37 million registered voters who don’t bother. Here in Illinois we have legions of postcard writers sending cheery reminders to registered voters all over the country. Those postcard-writing efforts are most often highly supported and supplied by local political parties. During election seasons, parties are manning phone banks, with volunteers calling party-affiliated voters to urge them to vote. They’re sending volunteers to other states to knock on doors of party-registered voters to get them energized. These activities need to continue with urgency.
I believe that over time, face to face encounters by “get out the vote” volunteers can encourage the discouraged, enchant the disenchanted, give back hope to the disappointed, dispel malignant skepticism, and show people how to vote despite not having the perfect candidate, and how to choose between perceived “bad” candidates. In other words, vote, no matter your doubts about this or that candidate or an abiding sense that your vote doesn’t make any difference anyway. Too many elections prove how wrong that can be. Too many low-vote elections yield terrible results, electing poor candidates who would have lost with greater participation.
I contend that if 10 million of registered voters who failed to vote in the 2024 presidential election had actually voted, we’d have a sane and functional federal administration now, particularly if a large contingent of those votes came from swing states. Nationally, according to Ballotpedia, “The overall turnout of eligible voters in the 2024 general election was 63.7%. This was lower than the 2020 record of 66.6% but higher than every other election year since at least 2004.” None of those numbers should make us proud. In swing states, Wisconsin rang up 78% and Michigan saw 75%, among the highest participation states. Arizona saw 64%, North Carolina 70%, Pennsylvania 71%.
The current occupant did not achieve a majority of the national popular vote, and in most of the those swing states his margins were quite low and usually not a majority of the votes. Had Kamala Harris had time for full organization and campaigning in five of the swing states where the margin of victory was 5.5% (Arizona) down to 1.4% (Michigan), she would have won those states.
All of the “get out the vote” energy and effort make a difference. Yes, it takes time and persistence. But it’s all worth it. Here in the midst of the midterm election of 2026, getting the vote out is crucial; and getting people who don’t vote to just do it can make a major difference, since a huge majority of citizens right now are very unhappy with the status quo and will vote for good candidates, of which there are many in this cycle.
So the key question every time you speak to someone is “Are you registered to vote?” If not, the key word in the conversation is “REGISTER!” If the person is registered, the key word is
Edmund J. McDevitt
© October 2026