Back during the Paleocene Epoch (we call it August/September 2020), in my FI column, I told you all to vote, dammit, because seculars have a long and sad history of voting at per capita rates way below those of theoconservatives. This is why the Republican minority has repeatedly won the presidency, houses of Congress, and state governments and why it dominates the Supreme Court. It’s also how their depraved Trump put the American majority vote through earthly hell for four years and perhaps more.

During the 2020 election, a sufficient number of center-left seculars did heed my clarion call to vote—along with center-left theists—to dump Trump and gain control of Congress by capturing the Senate while flipping a couple of once-red states. Over all, Americans voted at a rate not seen in decades.

 This is good.

And not so good.

Why not so good? Because while the 2020 vote total was more than 10 percent higher than in 2016, that was still just two-thirds (or less) of all those who can vote. That’s still pathetic. That was 156 million out of over 230–260 million depending on how one counts potential voters. In an election as important as 2020’s, turnout should have been closer to 100 percent. At the very least, it should have matched that of other democracies, whose turnouts are usually substantially higher than ours. I fear that it was because seculars were still way outvoted by the theocons that the hoped-for Big Blue Wave did not emerge. If it had, Democrats (who are on balance much more secular than Republicans) would enjoy real dominance in Congress. Florida, North Carolina, and Texas would all have gone conclusively blue.

Now wrap your secular brains around this.

In 2000, your White evangelicals made up about a quarter of the population, a fifth in 2020, and are now down to approximately 15 percent—all because of the super-fast secularization our nation is undergoing.

In 2008, when the White evangelicals were 21 percent of the electorate, they were about a quarter of those who voted, an impressive election turnout by American standards.

Here’s the kicker. In 2020, despite being a far smaller portion of the population, White evangelicals still were a quarter of those who voted. A fantastic voting rate around 80 percent!

Meanwhile, too many seculars remained electoral slackers. Even though largely nonreligious youth voted at unprecedented rates, those who do not think there are supernatural deities voted at a rate of around 60 percent. This is just sad. Added to believing liberals, that is around 40 million otherwise usually reasonable and responsible people who did not bother to cast a ballot. That is a form of political madness. And it is reckless. Had nontheists and center-left theists turned out at 80 percent, then the Biden-Harris ticket would have won by, oh, around a few dozen million votes. The big GOP advantage in the Electoral College would have been negated; as it was, Biden really won by less than 100,000 votes. That was his victory margin in three swing states, which had they gone the other way would have given the Electoral College to Trump. It was a scarily close thing. Ensuring that the theocon-dominated GOP minority cannot keep capturing the White House via the Electoral College requires outvoting them on an enormous scale.

It is often said that the religious Right votes at higher rates because they are angrier. This is true to a certain extent—and so what? Voters in the most advanced democracies are, by all accounts, not as mad as Yankees, yet they vote more than we do. Liberals cry voter suppression. While that is a very serious issue, I have not been able to find estimates of how many center-left votes are actually suppressed. Even if it is in the millions, it is very probably a small fraction of the many tens of millions who are entirely able to vote and don’t. Move election days to Sundays to get out more of the vote? That’s a good idea, but elections being on a workday does not keep savvy theocons away from the polls. It is a cultural malfunction of the left that needs to be cured by nearly all seculars doing their electoral duty and voting.          

From the 2016 to the 2020 elections, it was the secular center-left that was protesting. Since the last vote, it has been the White Right (with a major Christian influence) that has been raging on the streets and literally in the halls of Congress. That is because protesting and rioting is the resort of losers who did not win the last set of the elections that produce the real political power that runs the nation. The theocons are now up in arms because they correctly sense that even if they vote at high rates, there are no longer enough of them to outvote the growing irreligious center-left majority—even if a lot of the latter are electoral loafers. To really put the theoconservative right in its place, seculars need to stop the vote slacking. Then we need to use the executive, legislative, and judicial branches to run the nation in the secular, rational manner it so deserves and needs.