Low-information voters, about a fifth of the electorate, have very little knowledge of politics. They are disengaged, untethered.

Maybe that makes them bad citizens, but they’re also something else: role models.

Low-information voters are the canaries in a coal mine of overwhelming politics. They remind us that there are important reasons for the rest of us to disengage and escape.

It’s a reminder that the sense of feeling overwhelmed and overcome is shared by more than cranks. These feelings are pervasive.

That’s what the research shows. Just consider yourself. Admit it. As anxious as you are about politics generally and the presidential race particularly, you’d like a break. 

There are excellent reasons to become more disengaged from the torrent of politics and its leakage into everyday life. 

So let’s take a closer look at the low-information voter to see what the rest of us want to emulate and what we want to discard as we search for relief.

Then, I’ll talk about some disengagement strategies you can follow.

‘It’s Like You Cannot Get Away From It’

“Tuning out” is what the Pew Foundation calls its report on focus groups of voters who feel overwhelmed by politics and want to disengage.

They may feel guilty about wanting to be counted out, and they may still vote but want to get away from the noise and entanglements that they find relentless and destructive.

“When I was young,” a 30ish woman was quoted as saying, “I remember politics was hearing my parents talk about it, hearing about it on the news, on TV, and then reading about it like once a day in the newspaper.”

“But now,” she says, “It’s like you cannot get away from it.”

It’s tempting for high-information voters to think that low-information voters are stupid.

Here’s an example from a recent New Yorker article about low-information voters in south Georgia.

The first person in town the writer talked to was a “twenty-seven-year-old garbage collector. When I asked him where he got his news, he replied, ‘I don’t really pay attention to it, man. I’m on social media. But I try to avoid politics there as best I can.”

He did plan to vote in November: His choice? “Probably just do what my daddy says.”

Disengaged voter as yahoo. Garbage collector. Small southern town — in Marjorie Taylor Greene’s congressional district yet. It’s easy for a high-information voter to think, “see, that’s what they’re like.  Small town redneck idiots. Trump voters for sure.”

And “do what my daddy says” may sound cornpone and country, but in fact it is common for voters to turn to sources they trust.  In high falutin language, people consult with their trusted social networks, which is probably what you do when you talk politics.

Look, I am not trying to romanticize low-information voters. I am not saying that they are “just like us.”  I’m not defending their demographics. I’m defending their applicability.

“Count me out” is more than just a low-information voter refrain. It is a useful term for everyone to protect themselves from the leakage and the psychological imperialism of politics.

‘Election Coverage Is Hyperventilatory’

Advocates of democracy worry about the uninformed citizen with good reason. But today there is also another worry, which is the overly informed citizen who is inundated by the noise but can’t stop listening, gaining less perspective and at the same time more angst.

Voters need to spend more of their energy protecting themselves from the intrusion of politics. It’s good for the soul, good for the family and good for the country.

One of the most distressing examples of this leakage and boundary intrusion is the high number of parents who do not want their child to marry someone with different political views. Just short of 40% of both Republicans and Democrats agree.

“It wouldn’t have upset me 10 years ago,” one parent said. “But now it’s not ‘just politics’ anymore. It’s a serious moral divide.”

Exactly. Now, it’s common to see your opponents not simply as ideologically different but morally bereft.

It leads to a political test for everything. “Is she a Democrat?” Is he a Republican?”

To break this pattern, the best general guide is based on a vaudeville routine:

Doctor: “What’s wrong?”

Patient: “It hurts when I go like this.”

Doctor: “So, don’t go like this.”

Ari Weitzman, a writer for Tangle, which is an excellent, objective subscription-supported news source, has this advice:

“By nature, election coverage is hyperventilatory. And we know that the race between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris is going to consume more and more of the oxygen in the room the closer we get to November, and we’ve all got to focus on our breathing. So today, I want to hand you an oxygen mask.”

Create A Politics-Free Space In Your Life

So, one thing you can do is take a breath and separate the bad air from the good. The worst air is going to be the recent media coverage of the Harris-Trump race.

What you get from the media is overemphasis on the events of the day as if each is a game-changer.  There are no such game-changers. 

It is wrong to believe that following the news every day makes you a high-information citizen. You become overloaded yet badly informed at the same time.

If you know how to interpret them, polling and election models are better. The Tangle article I just cited also has a good discussion about how to interpret polls.

How many times do you have to hear someone saying Trump is outrageous, Harris is too far left, especially since those of you who want to hear it over and over again already know who you are voting for and feel more anxious after hearing it for the umpteenth time?

Psychologists would call that an addiction.

To insulate themselves from politics, people need to work hard to protect or create spaces in their life that keep politics out.

It could be an explicitly sacred space where you recognize the limits of politics to cross God’s domain. 

Or it might be an oasis of a sacred space you create for yourself for other reasons.

Another remedy, which is closer to politics yet very different, is to take part in community work that blurs political differences. Most community work does exactly that. Think of Springfield, Ohio, which has become a political hot button amid campaign controversy over its Haitian immigrant population.

You can think about that the way the media and politicians think about Springfield. Or you can look at what everyday people in the town are doing to meet the challenges that the immigrants bring. It turns out to be a lot.

Give yourself space. It’s not noble to feel so anxious about politics. It’s counterproductive. It’s not good for democracy when informed citizens become obsessive ones.

So, one-and-a-half cheers to low-information voters for at least recognizing the burden of politics and trying to do something about it.

It’s fine to disapprove of how the “count me outs” deal with their disengagement from politics.

But keep in mind that their need to disengage is also your need. Maybe more than you’re willing to admit.