The lax attendance in American presidential elections often are cited as evidence of the electorate’s apathy, but a much more complex of factors is at work. Applied for many reasons in the United States a voting age population turnout rate includes a significant number of persons ineligible to vote. It falsely reduces the level of participation by at least several percentage points in electoral statistics. Registration laws are a major influence on differences in turnout between the United States and Western Europe. It seems that participation in American presidential elections would increase by more than ten percentage points if the European system of electoral registers was adopted.