Voting

The primaries were last week here in MO. In St. Louis County, where I vote, voter turnout was 23.54%.

I'm trying to figure out what this means. Does it mean that we just don't care? Does it mean that no one pays attention to primaries? Surely turnout will be higher in November. Right? That number means that there wasn't even one thing, one race, one issue, that could get more than 75% of people to the polls (which are open 6am-7pm, by the way).

And, as a corollary, would mandatory voting be better? They have it in Australia, where voter turnout purportedly reaches 95%. Maybe that's good, because then people will hopefully at least read up a little bit about what's going on in their government. But what if they don't, and they just pick people because they have funny names? Or they always pick C, because on the SAT that's the most common correct answer? And doesn't it seem sort of counter to our idea of freedom of choice, in every aspect of life, to force people to the polls if they don't want to go?

Isn't it odd that I care so little for politics that I don't even read the news, and yet I vote? Who or what got me to the polls, you may ask. That's between me and my electronic touchscreen :-)