George W. Bush will be the president for another four years. I’m disappointed by this, but I’m not going to be making any arguments here on the subject. It’s not worth the time. The voters have spoken.
The people of the United States have not spoken, but it’s too late. I’m amazed at the level of apathy in this country. I know that it’s unrealistic to expect everyone to vote, but I’m surprised that the media focuses their turnout analysis on the turnout relative to other elections rather than the turnout relative to the set possible maximums (0% to 100% of those eligible to vote). Most of the news networks will show you a pie chart like this:
I think a complete pie would include all eligible voters:
Viewed this way, it’s easy to see that the people have not, in fact, spoken. The non-voters could have changed all the results.
Sources: I got the voter numbers from CNN, which are not yet complete but close enough to make my point. I got the eligible voter figure (186 Million) from this 2003 article on FindLaw. I had a hard time finding that number included in any election coverage.