Almost Half Of The Country Didn't. Even. Vote.

Election stats show almost half the country didn’t vote

There’s an MSNBC screenshot going viral today that may make you want to rip all your hair out, cry, and then gorge on some Oreos. It seems almost half the country didn’t vote. Yup, that’s right, 46.9% to be exact.

This shot has been shared nearly 400,000 times.

Yes, this is real.

According to The United States Election Project, nearly half of all eligible voters didn’t vote. There are 231,556,622 eligible voters in this country, and only 131,018,000 ballots counted. So basically, we have no idea who our country’s chosen candidate is, because many people didn’t make it to the polls — and this is not about just not bothering to go, either.

The Supreme Court ruled against The Voting Rights Act in 2013. This closed roughly 800 polling places and led to strict ID requirements for voters in multiple states. It’s impossible to measure how many people did not vote because of these new voting restrictions, but the lowest turnout in recent history points to this not just simply being a coincidence.

Voter turnout this year was way lower than 2012 or 2008:

In multiple states the vote was so close, which proves that as many people participating in the process as possible truly matters. The harder we make it for people to participate, the less representative our elections will be.

As for those who did get out and vote, can you guess who voted for Trump?

If you guessed “white people” — Ding! Ding! Ding! You win four years of hell.