by Chris Kling

Created on: June 11, 2008

I firmly believe that there are now three major political parties: the Republicans, the Democrats, and the Apathetics.

Let's examine the voting habits of the latter group. A habit I'll call "voter apathy".

[Voter apathy: an oxymoron. Like "jumbo shrimp" or "government intelligence".]

Dictionary.com defines "voter" as "a person who votes". "Vote", of course, is defined as "a formal expression of opinion or choice, either positive or negative, made by an individual or body of individuals".

To wit: "To vote" is an action verb. "Voter" may be a noun, but in my mind, it's an "action noun", because it implies action; going to the polls and voting.

"Apathy", on the other hand, is defined as both the "absence or suppression of passion, emotion, or excitement" and the "lack of interest in or concern for things that others find moving or exciting"

"Voter apathy", then, would be a person who is motivated to vote who is demotivated to vote.

Make sense? It doesn't to me, either, but it's something that virtually every politician depends upon.

What? Really!?

Why do people join the apathetic party? Something happens to "suppress their passion, emotion or excitement" for the political game. Something causes them to develop a "lack of interest in or concern for things that others find moving or exciting." In other words, they either become complacent or jaded.

The complacent Apathetics are those who help maintain the status quo, and the voter that incumbent politicians rely on the most. Every election cycle, I'm convinced that every single sitting politician says this quiet prayer, "Dear God, please let the number of people not voting at all plus the number of people voting for me be more than the number of people voting against me!"

The jaded Apathetics, in my view, are those most often targeted by the challengers, and it's the challenger's who pray, "Dear God, please let me enrage enough of the jaded Apathetics so that their number plus those who actually support me outnumber those voters who are complacent."

And unfortunately, I'm simply convinced that there are more complacent Apathetics than there are jaded Apathetics. That's why - over the years - "splinter groups" of apathetic party members have been identified and targeted by politicos. Oh, you know them as "special interest groups". But really, they are simply jaded Apathetics who have been led to believe that they need not be jaded if they support one candidate over the other.

There may be a stealth sub-group of apathetic party members, the under-educated. But as ignorance is bliss, we may never really be able to quantify that sub-group.

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