Abstention means lack or deprivation of doing, exercising or consuming something, applying to the most diverse areas. It is a " Do not volunteer ", by which someone remains passive to a stimulus. Abstention, a term that derives from the Latin word " Abstentio ", is a failure to do or not to act that normally does not produce any legal effect, although on occasions it can be considered as the exteriorization of a certain will and in this sense be taken into account by law. In political science, it is the act by which a potential voter in an election decides not to exercise their right to vote, either in a general election or if, in a parliamentary procedure, the representative is present at the vote but does not vote.
In both cases, the subject abides by the result of the vote of the voters who did vote, as is the case with the blank vote or the null vote. Even when in democratic regimes citizens are associated with a civic or moral duty to vote, which in some legal systems becomes a legal duty, electoral abstentionism appears with the vote itself. It simply consists of the non-participation in the act of voting of those who have the right to do so. Electoral abstentionism, which is part of the broader phenomenon of participatory apathy, is an indicator of participation: it shows the percentage of non-voters over the total of those who have the right to vote.
Although for the purposes of quantifying the degree of popular ignorance through abstention, abstention is considered to collect both the votes of those who say they are ignorant of political issues (apolitical) and of those who are not satisfied with the system itself or none of the candidates or parties that are presented, so it is often difficult to discern abstention due to ignorance and abstention from protest. Currently, there are countries with significant abstention rates in the electoral issue, as is the case of Venezuela, however, there are campaigns on both sides of the contest with the intention that the citizen is activated and goes to bounce to collaborate with the decision that in the end belongs to everyone.
