During his weekly “New Rules” segment, Bill Maher addressed the disappointingly low turnout in the 2014 midterm elections. He also thumped British comic Russell Brand for exhorting people not to vote.

The November elections, Maher noted, had the lowest turnout in any election since 1942, “when many Americans didn’t make it to the polls because they’d been captured by the Japanese.”

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Nothing will change in the U.S., he said, until Americans vote for it to change.

“Russell Brand is in the news, he’s a funny guy,” said Maher, “but he just wrote a book that’s more laughable — where he tells young people not to vote because the system is so awful and so dirty that the only solution is to bring it down. Not by violence, but not by voting either.”

“No, by some sort of spiritual awakening,” he scoffed. “Oh, for f*ck’s sake, fine, you know, don’t vote, but don’t dress it up as something noble or sophisticated. The fake excuses offend me.”

Watch the video, embedded below via Real Time: