Thinking about your low turnout rate.
Apathy, fuck yeah I guess. 
Worrying that so many might be apathetic.
There's a lot to be worried about.
The question then becomes, if turnouts increase, what happens in a system where a majority of voters care less about politics than the ones who currently vote. 
Sometimes I think it is all the PR and spin-doctoring that is causing the apathy.
Voters are kept dumb. What if spin-doctoring was stopped, and the political trade of debating, finding common grounds, giving in to gain something else became visible. It would become exiting to watch. And people would understand what was happening more. Voting would matter again, if politics were about the well-being of the country, instead of being about the glamour of the politicians.
In America? Americans don't vote because, in many (if not most) national and statewide races, voting doesn't matter. Look at the Electoral College, and how a few swing states decide both the primaries and the national elections.
Link Also, if you're interested, look at the spin doctoring that occurred during the early years of the United States of America, such as the Adams-Jefferson elections of 1796 and 1800
Link, or Watergate for a more modern example. If anything, the campaigns have gotten less ruthless since the early days of the country.
To me, most of the voter apathy is caused by the entrenchment of political systems that don't serve modern America. Most of the systems for federal elections were developed back when "United States" was plural instead of singular. Individual states functioned more as sovereign nations than they do today, and state politics was correspondingly more important. Then we fought a civil war over states' rights, and the states began to subsume more power to the federal government. The "United States" became singular. Over time, the parties and the system have become so set that the people in power have little motivation to change it. In this system, so much is stacked against the average voter that there's little reason for many to turn out at the polls.
