Apathy is the enemy of democracy. Indifference in politics is like a Zoo with no patrons. The poo-flinging monkeys put on a show no one sees. Despite the absence of spectators, lions still must eat and zookeepers make excellent meals.
Apathy in elections means outcomes are skewed in favor of fringe candidates whose supporters are the only passionate ones. It’s hard to understand how an apathetic attitude towards voting can exist at a time where every act, every word, every decision is debated in feral and tribal ways.
Take the election victory of Zoran Mamdani as an example. He ran as an intifada-loving communist in a city that was, until recently, considered the epicenter of American commerce, the home of Wall Street and the Stock Market.
Mamdani campaigned on government run grocery stores, free bus rides, and free childcare centers. He promised to freeze rent for many, if not all. He was born in Uganda, never held a job of any consequence, and due to his spectacularly average experience and inability to earn a living he pursued the only profession that rewards failure in practice and thinking, politics.
The election that swept he and his band of congenial communists into office was touted as the biggest (in terms of total votes) since 1969. More than two million ballots were counted, the most in New York City since 2.46 million votes were cast nearly sixty years earlier.
Here’s the part you don’t know, or weren’t told, a fact that inescapably points to an apathetic stance amongst voters. According to the New York Campaign Finance Board, Mamdani’s victory came with only 41% of registered voters participating. Nearly 60% of all registered voters were so indifferent to the outcome they stayed home.
In 1969, John Lindsay won re-election as NYC mayor with an 81% turnout. Lindsay’s victory resonated for the very reasons Mamdani’s does not. Yet the consequences are the same for NYC regardless of how few consider it important enough to even cast a vote.
Last Tuesday, Mamdani praised victories in NYC for explicitly America-hating socialist candidates for US Congress in Darializa Avila Chevalier and Brad Lander. As a result, MSN promoted Mamdani to defacto leader of Democrats with the headline “Party of Zohran’: Mamdani emerges as Democratic kingmaker after socialist allies sweep NYC primaries.”
Mamdani’s ascension to “kingmaker” came in primaries in which most people stayed home.
The ‘Big Apple’ has 5.5 million registered voters and the state more than 12 million yet as of today the New York State Board of Elections reports less than 1million ballots were cast statewide. Primaries that lifted far-left crazies to prominence and likely victory in November were claimed wherein about 10% of registered participated.
Both Chevalier and Lander will be US representatives next year as their congressional districts have not elected Republicans to office since 2010. Ballotpedia reports that in both districts the last two Democrat candidates won comfortably by 80% to 20% margins.
Could these candidates have prevailed had 50% of the electorate fulfilled their obligation to our representative republic? Might they have suffered the defeat they and their ideas deserve if 70% of New Yorkers fulfilled their minimum constitutional obligation?
The argument being made isn’t that Democrats would not prevail in the midterms for these offices. Rather it is that their party might have survived if its adherents had chosen action over apathy.
Is this simply a worm in the Big Apple? Nope, in 2026’s LA Mayoral primary two intellectual giants, whose combined IQs are still in the low two digits, will duke it out in monosyllabic sound bites in November on the say of only 37% of registered voters, according to the LA County Registrar-Recorde.
In a city that was literally on fire a year ago, even warmth of the remaining embers couldn’t motivate voters to the polls. Apathetic citizens would rather see the city go up in smoke, than fill out a ballot.
LA’s current ranking as the seventh circle of Hell isn’t the fault of misguided, mental midgets in city government, but can be laid at the feet of voters who’d rather let it burn than cast their votes.
The City of Big Shoulders is also the city of small voter turnout. Chicago’s FOX32 reported that the 2026 Chicago primary drew 27% of registered voters and this was up from 22% in 2022. Chicagoans fear of lead poisoning might explain why they stayed away from the ballot boxes, yet their lack of participation is precisely what allows the city to be a real-life shooting gallery.
Apathy will never solve society’s problems, no more than pretending problems don’t exist will or entrusting their solutions to the very people that caused them in the first place.
Indifference will not fix the problems that plague modern American society, but it will make them worse.
Voting is your voice; it is one person standing on principle and saying I will not be silenced. It is the place where what we become is decided, where we are going is determined, and it is the beginning of the fall or the rise of our nation.
Zookeeper Democrats took the lions of Socialism into their party voluntarily and invited them to sit at table with them. As was inevitable, they now find themselves on the menu. Those lions feast on voter apathy and could not survive without it.
We are all now on the menu.
Stephen Piccirillo © 2026
