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You make it sound like a new phenomenon; only 58% of the voting-eligible population turned out in 1980. 63% voted in 2024
I certainly did not. Disenfranchisement is a tradition at least as old as democracy itself. FFS, we explicitly denied half the population the vote until 1919, simply because they weren't born with balls. But then they weren't "eligible voters" so even when they were flinging bricks through windows and roughly up state assemblymen to win their right to the ballot, they didn't count towards voting statistics.
If you want talk about turnout, nevermind "eligible". Consider we're a nation of 347M people, only 151M got handed a ballot. That's 43% not 63%. A full one in five Americans are entirely ignored by our political class.
But then again, if those last 20% were included, would you be happy with the people they voted for? So much of these "not enough people are voting" complaints I see drop off the radar as soon as their team starts winning.
A huge chunk of the US population is either:
An arbitrary designation set by statute
An arbitrary designation set by statute
Again, you could say the same thing of women before 1919. Or slaves before 1870. Just pointing at tens of millions of people and saying "You don't count because we said so".
Because you're trapped in the same backwards headspace as Stephen Douglas circa 1858. Or John fucking Adams, trying to explain to his wife Abigail why nobody at the Constitutional Convention wanted their wives to participate.