How The American People Can Take Back Their Government . Richard Labunski is an associate professor in the School of Journalism and Telecommunications at the University of Kentucky. People are terribly cynical about politics.
Voter turnout continues to decline.
Take 1996 as an example. In that year, fewer than half of those eligible bothered to vote even though we were electing a president. That was the lowest turnout since 1924. More than half the children in this country live in households where neither parent votes. Those figures are appalling and show that something is going on when people feel so disconnected from politics.