My Year of Election Fatigue and Relaxation

“It’s voter fatigue,” my therapist, Dr. Tuttle, explained to me. Some people just get voted out.”

It all made sense. I was simply too tired of the constant voting.

I began my hibernation in the winter of 2023, when the articles started. I swallowed one New York Times Op-Ed About Biden’s Age and one Gen Z Is the Most Politically Disengaged Generation Yet, and was out for three days.

My year of Voter Fatigue would not be an act of self-centeredness; it would be an act of self-preservation. If I did not not vote now, I might never not vote again.

I came to crave the comfort of the election coverage, which assured me that millions of other people were equally disengaged. Not Reva, my only friend, who had no qualms with voting for someone who was currently courting full-out war in multiple countries. Reva had not grown out of the “Grandpa Joe UwU” stage of praxis that the rest of us had dallied with in 2012. I hated her.

“It’s a two-party system,” she said, “I try not to think about it too much and just VOTE.”

When she said “vote,” she said it in the way it would appear on a bumper sticker.

At our appointment in January, Dr. Tuttle was sympathetic to my plight, but she did ask uncomfortable questions. “Are you sure you have fatigue this early?” she asked. “We’re in the middle of the primaries, which is usually when people choose between the single candidate and not voting at all.”

I explained that if I was not ambivalent about voting now, my voter ambivalence would likely strike later and more severely. She was in complete agreement.

“You might as well add a couple of these PEW Surveys About Voter Ambivalence to your prescription. You could even try participating in some of your own. I’ll send you the links.”

I set myself up with a nice bottle of red wine and took my surveys. At first, I felt nothing but mild anxiety reading questions like “Do you feel more disengaged when you think about the economy, which is doing bad/good?” When I woke up, I found myself trying to feed a copy of my birth certificate into the door of my dishwasher and muttering under my breath, “Maybe the counting machine is broken.”

Had I been sleepvoting?

“Well, the voting impulse has a mind of its own. Have you tried voting on your side?” asked Dr. Tuttle. “I got a really interesting vote in this week after loosening up at Pilates. Have you ever thought about that?”

I watched a TikTok of Whoopi Goldberg inexplicably asking Liz Cheney to run for president on The View. I received a couple of survey results over email confirming that voter fatigue was indeed rampant. I ordered pad thai. I braided several hanging chads into a tasteful contemporary throw. Politics, as usual, was exhausting.

By the summer, Reva had been out making her voice heard, getting people to register to vote, and watching propaganda on YouTube that had been AI-generated by Russian bots. I, personally, wished Reva’s voice would be heard less.

“I think you’re improving,” said Dr. Tuttle. Many people never reach this stage of not voting. It wasn’t until 2016 that I myself finally had the courage to write in “Elvis! (Presley)” on my ballot for county commissioner.

I told her that it seemed like many of my acquaintances were holding the threat of impending fascism over my head, which she dismissed as hogwash.

“Besides,” she added, “under fascism, there won’t be any voting at all, which will be such a relief. And we won’t have to deal with all this election noise, because the press will be controlled by someone responsible, like the government.”

I developed a not-voting plan during the month of October 2024, as I was advised to do by many hand-wringing leaflets. In the end, the AI-generated YouTube clips broke through: I passed out for three months while watching Joe Biden—who seemed to have undergone a formidable BBL—“Shake It Off” to Taylor Swift.

I awoke on January 31, 2025, to a knock at the door. It was a mailperson delivering a box containing a Stanley tumbler with Donald Trump’s face on it. When I asked who had ordered the tumbler, he cheerfully replied that he hoped I had, since they were now mandatory.

As I found out, perhaps the best remedy for voter fatigue was receiving election results.