And the Winner Is..

If you've somehow missed the ever-present TV ads, steady flow of
newspaper analyses and final salvo of Congressional campaigning over the
weekend, this is election Tuesday. Politicians across the United States
will soon see --or hope to, anyway--that their efforts have convinced
their constituents to vote them into office. Yet the nation's inclination
to vote has been slipping steadily for the past 40 years: in the last
mid-term elections, a majority of registered Americans did not vote at
all. And this year, the non-partisan Committee for the Study of the
American Electorate expects mid-term election turnout to be one of the
lowest since 1924.

"I think there is a sense of being manipulated," says Jerilyn Ross,
M.A., LICSW, director of the Ross Center for Anxiety and Related
Disorders in Washington, D.C. "People really feel like 'What's the
point?' You vote for someone, and the Supreme Court decides."

Carolyn Ingram, Ph.D., a psychologist based in Kentfield,
California, agrees that we are a nation disillusioned. "People who don't
vote have a sense of disenfranchisement and cynicism, feeling an 'us
versus them' relationship with the voting process and maybe a sense of
hopelessness," she says.

Both Ross and Ingram note that there are positive psychological
aspects of voting, such as gaining a sense of empowerment and optimism
through having a voice in the system. "People can feel that they are
taking responsibility for the world around them," says Ross.