The upcoming election seems to have a lot of people biting their fingernails... me, anyway. A lot of my right-minded — er, perhaps I should say “left-minded” — friends and I are stunned that Bush has such a following and may (though this seems like mentioning The Scottish Play by name on Opening Night) actually win. Are people crazy, or what?

These musings brought to mind an essay I wrote last year about attitudes toward the mentally ill in our society. Though the essay didn’t turn out so well, one section seemed rather pertinent to the current state of affairs...

Crazy People Are Voting

Lisa J. Bigelow

Two weeks ago, the panel on the comedic talk show “Politically Incorrect” discussed whether the mentally ill should be encouraged, or even allowed, to vote. In less than a minute, the panelists discarded the term “mentally ill” in favor of the more direct, vaguer, distinctly distasteful term “crazy.” For example, “I don’t want crazy people deciding who gets elected,” or “People should be in their right minds if they’re going to be making decisions that affect the whole country."

By saying these people are crazy, the panelists decided that all mentally ill people are incapable of making rational decisions. That obviously isn’t true. The mentally ill’s view of reality might sometimes be a bit skewed. Depressed people tend, according to psychological studies, to avoid information that contradicts their negative view of life; paranoid schizophrenics think the world is after them. But they are certainly not solely screaming monsters or quivering masses of jelly without minds to make decisions.

I’ll admit my own prejudices, though. My first day of work for the mental health agency last summer, my supervisor sent me with two residents, Emil and Helena, to vote in whatever local election. We walked slowly up the hill to the church, whose basement contained a set of voting booths, chatting together. Emil had greeted me at the front door of the group home just two hours before, a friendly, intelligent man in his sixties or seventies. Helena, a proud grandmother, had already laid out her entire family tree for me. Without having read their files, I didn’t know their diagnoses. If I had met them on the street, I wouldn’t have guessed they were in need of long-term domiciliary care.

“I’m going to vote Republican all the way down,” Emil told me as we neared the church. “I’ve always been a Republican, always will be.”

I was inwardly incredulous, since this man — like most of residents in these group homes — was on Social Security, Medicare, and whatever other government-funded programs for the aged, the poor, and the sick. Programs that the Right is notorious for cutting. I said nothing.

Before entering the building, a smiling, panting canvasser approached Helena and shoved a flyer in her face. “Do you feel such-and-such way about such-and-such issue?” the canvasser cried. “Then vote for so-and-so!”

“All right,” Helena replied amiably.

Again, I was flabbergasted. What irresponsibility this was, voting arbitrarily based upon which candidate’s toady caught you first! What sort of rational voting behavior could come of such a lack of logic? People like Helena, I thought, should not be making decisions for the rest of us. But again I said nothing, for who was I to tell another person how to vote?

I think the panelists on “Politically Incorrect” assumed that mentally ill voters are tools for their families, their neighbors, campaigners — and for all I could tell from this incident, maybe they’re right. But what voter isn’t a tool of some sort, making voting decisions based on flashy ads, our parents’ values, our whims and our pocketbooks? What voter has not made some ill-informed decision, or voted for a Democrat not because she shared the candidate’s values but rather by virtue of the candidate not being a Republican?

This nation, as a republic, is molded by individuals who are crazy, if not by medical standards, then by the standards of people in the opposing parties, people of differing ideologies. We’re so set in our own ways, that the idea that anyone else could truly believe differently from us is incredible. We won’t necessarily go so far as to claim that the opposition is mentally ill, but we question their rationality. The “Politically Incorrect” panelists’ fears have nothing to do with brain chemicals when it comes down to it ‚ they have to do with rationality, and the assumption that people with chemical imbalances cannot be rational. That itself is irrationality.

The residents and I entered the church, voted in whatever thought-out or arbitrary manner, and left.