As we prepare for midterm elections, we have much to examine about the representative nature of our voting process. This summer saw a second voting debacle in Florida, in as many years. The voter primary was marred by inoperative machines and opening delays in polling places. Voter's rights are also being hotly debated in New Jersey and Minnesota, where replacement candidates have tested election laws. Reports of voter intimidation and faulty equipment are rolling in from around the country. The mechanics of our democracy are under intense media scrutiny, at present, and it is nearly impossible for Americans to be unaware of what is at stake. It is a stunning reflection of a much more important process that mystical thinkers must examine.

Mystics teach us that as co-creators of reality, we vote constantly through our choices, through our thoughts and beliefs, and through direct action. Nothing can occur, in this reality, without some kind of consensus between every part of the whole. Democracy is a good imitation of this process. This great experiment called the United States of America was founded on the premise, and original motto "E Pluribus Unum." (Out of Many, One) Like the formation of moment to moment reality, democracy works through the dynamic cycle of unity, polarization, conflict, and consensus.

Two years ago, we received a wake-up call about the integrity of our democracy. Our voting system is badly broken. The drama of Election 2000 put the issue under a microscope. Through news accounts, we learned that the problems were not new or unique to Florida, but that the closeness of the presidential election had highlighted systemic flaws. Hanging and pregnant chads, undervotes, overvotes -- none of this was, in fact, new. Every state routinely disqualified ballots, we learned. In the aftermath, we also learned that tens of thousands of African Americans in Florida were disenfranchised by a faulty computer report that counted non-felons among a much smaller number of legally disqualified felons. The end result of all the mechanical and legal problems, whether deliberate or accidental, was that many Americans were not represented in the electoral system.

When democracy works, government is representative of the majority opinion. Right now, it is not working. Al Gore won the majority of votes in this country, and, by many accounts, in Florida, as well. Yet George W. Bush gained the Whitehouse in a Supreme Court Decision that found the "individual citizen has no federal constitutional right to vote for electors for the President of the United States."

The democratic process, as Americans understood it, was abrogated. The whole, it would appear, does not represent the sum of its parts. But, nothing can be happening in the reflective world that we did not agree to, if not through the ballot box or the pollster's pen, in our consciousness. The contradiction between the actions we've taken and the result in the reflective world indicates that there is some sort of disconnect between our intellectual choices and what we are choosing in our higher mind. The spirit, unlike the intellect, makes choices that the ego does not like. It is one of the ways we learn during our human existence. The grand scale on which this issue is playing out indicates that it is a lesson for our society, as a whole, and even for the world at large.

Here, in the United States, we have notoriously low voter turn-outs. Much of what is happening in politics and world events instills feelings of powerlessness. Average citizens see themselves as passive observers of the dramatic interplay of the wealthy and powerful, and of government actions that seem out-of-touch with their desires. A sense that our individual votes don't count was affirmed for many people in November of 2000.

It is not actually possible not to cast a vote in an election. The election will take place just the same. Time does not stop moving because one does not to participate in the occurrences. An abstention, or un-cast ballot, is a de facto vote for whichever side wins. The only question is whether one has voted actively or passively. It is also impossible not to vote in the creation of our day to day reality. Each one of us, each individual part of the whole, participates in some form. The only choice is whether to participate consciously or with eyes closed. Unconscious participation usually results in feelings of powerlessness over events -- the same kind of powerlessness disenfranchised voters in Florida felt.