Talk:Voter fatigue

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I have looked at a few websites for this term, and a lot of them just seem to regurgitate 'exactly' what it is that this page states – which is far from informative. Some citations or references would clearly help (though this is easier said than done).

The term may have some legitimacy in academic circles BUT it seems that the current structure of the article has some problems :

1) The introductory sentence reads “In politics, voter fatigue is the apathy that the electorate can experience when they are required to vote too often.” - This sentence places undue emphasis on people “voting too often”, with the rest of the article then going onto subsequently contradict* the introductory sentence by providing a list of reasons (some rational) concerning the causes of voter fatigue, with few of these reasons being that voters are required to vote too often.
 * With the rest of the article at least being partially inconsistent with the introductory sentence.

2) There is a wide overlap between the causes of Voter apathy and Voter fatigue, but the article does not provide due emphasis (ie: it seems silent) upon this overlap and the likely correlation between the causes of Voter apathy and Voter fatigue. If people have lost faith in the democratic decision making process (which requires their vote for decision making when choosing a candidate) due to the belief that voting changes nothing within the (supposedly) democratic system, and that voting is a waste of time for their daily concerns, then the idea that this level of disillusion with the democratic system has arisen because voters “ are required to vote too often.” is surely misleading and disingenuous.  One might argue, very rationally and objectively, that increasing the number of issues (likely to have daily relevance) that voters can vote about would  combat voter apathy and fatigue. The introductory sentence to the article is thus likely to be false in the majority of situations in which voter turnout is low – and so misleading for this reason.

3) There is a danger that the article could be misconstrued to imply that ANY level of Voter participation is too strenuous for the electorate to bear and that democracy, for this reason, should be denied to people. The article should be clear that situations in which voter apathy and fatigue is high are the extreme (at least conceptually – and probably in daily life too) and not the norm.  In functional democratic systems, voter apathy and fatigue are low.

My primary concern is that the introductory sentence makes out that this phenomenon of voters being apathetic because (presumably) they have too high a level of democratic involvement/participation due to being “required to vote too often” is common enough to deserve a name. But, even in supposedly democratic countries, the level of democratic participation by the electorate is woefully low and lacking – voters are apathetic not due to too high a level of democratic participation (as would be the case when voting too often) but due to too low a level of democratic participation.

If the term is academically respectful and meaningful (which a google search for pdfs with the term shows may be the case – though whether this indicates consensus on the meaning of the term is a different matter) then the article should go to efforts to indicate that its academic usage may be misleading to the layman who would naturally assume that voter fatigue is due to electorate disenfranchisement with the democratic system.

I intend to make minor changes to the article in due course if no response is found on the talk page.

AnInformedDude (talk) 21:56, 6 June 2012 (UTC)


 * None of the references in this article use the term "apathy" - anyone opposed to removing the term from the article absent sourcing? Perhaps "political alienation" is a more precise term (that happens to link to the "political apathy" article)? Superb Owl (talk) 07:00, 31 October 2023 (UTC)