18% - 6.3 Million people who didn't vote (NYC 2009)

Not sure about those outer parts of queens. Don't think they're really all that red considering the poverty level.

This election was close. Much much closer then people predicted. If two million more people had got to the polls the out come would have been different.

staten island sucks

People in NY are more worry about jobs and what's happening to their homes. I can't speak for all of the people that didn't vote, but let's be realistic here, neither candidate offer much in change and help.

Why should they vote for one lying asshole when we all ready have one !

Sad, isn't it? In my district/precinct we have over 300 people registered to vote. That's just the ones that bothered to register to vote. Only 64 people showed up to vote on Tuesday.

go go gadget republic

The 7,236,224 people whod didn't vote assumes everyone is eligible to vote. Even infants.

That is sad! Why people don't care when it comes to local politics, I will never understand!

It is not unreasonable to refuse to participate in a broken system.

If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal.

What the what!? Don't you New Yorkers give a damn about your future? How about the total BS about Bloomberg taking out term limits to allow himself to run?

Don`t understand why they want everyone to wait on lines while they could just vote trough the Internet !
A Website should be established where everyone can log in with there SSC number to make sure that the person is real and legal to vote .
Example : most of my Friends were working and no employee is going to tolerate to give a day off for voting .
That`s reality .

its not bloomberg's fault they didn't vote, he may have spent alot of money but he won.

it's everywhere, in all the states. People not voting.

In Australia it is mandatory to vote, but I don't see it being law in the US.

This may sound dumb but look at the figures ... 1,063,776 voted 7,236,224 didn't vote and it took 557,059 votes to win. Now ... say that only 10% of those who didn't vote refused because they thought the system was corrupt ... if that same small percentage had an alternative candidate that would be a victory.

In the nicest possible way, I say ... if you don't agree with the system that you have to live in day in, day out then get off your asses and do something about it ... find good people ...start a website, build up numbers through an email campaign and change things ... start it off as a hobby, I bet you it'll get serious pretty quickly.

it's the way we have set up the voting system in america. We need to move voting day to a saturday and give people more straight forward information or give people the day off on election day like they do in most democratic countries in the world.
This is another way our goverment is letting us know that our vote dosent count.

An hourly employee ( which is most people) cannot afford to lose precious time no matter how important voting is, eating/shelter/healthcare becomes more important. So their voices never get heard although they are the ones that get hurt in the long term from the bad decisions made by our government.

It's probably because it was an off year election.

By not voting the citizens of NYC are showing they were not content with any of the candidates running for Mayor. They saw it as a waste of their time. Most Politicians have shown us time and time again that they will say exactly what you want to hear, but will never have any intentions on acting on those promises.

If I am right, this can be a great sign.
This can look like most people are lacking a political conscience, however it might be the very opposite. I want to see it as a great sign of independence or a start of "think with your own mind", dropping "the sheeple".

A possible explanation to this is that people know that voting for a "stranger" won't change things as learned from the past.
They might get involved, take some kind of action, volunteer, march in protest rather than voting for no more or less than a last name.
People are understanding more and more the difference between politic and politicians.

The day I see a proportional decline in participation like this one but for a protest march or a campaign, than I will think something is wrong and we might be getting numb and/or isolated from true politics.
Until then I wouldn't worry, instead let's make the "change" a public domain, that's where it belongs.

Technically speaking, the author should clarify if the 8.3 million is the total number of residents, or total number of eligible voters. This would make a difference.

I don't understand what the big deal is. Wasn't this country founded on the disenfranchisement of ethnic minorities? He's a billionaire for Pete's sake isn't he supposed to rig elections!? I hope less people vote everywhere next year and they sell the rights to our SS #s to a Chinese real estate securities trading company.

whats the number of homeless people in new york?