Meredith Sprengel (C'08)
Meredith Sprengel (C'08) researches the psychology of voter apathy.
Meredith Sprengel, a psychology honors student in her senior year at Georgetown, points to some unsettling statistics about the United States’ electoral system for the past century. Since the presidential election of 1896, the percentage of citizens who have voted in a national or state election has never been more than 80 percent. Only half of the eligible voters in the presidential election of 1988 actually voted—a trend that has continued to this very day. Based on a survey of 22 industrialized nations, only Switzerland surpasses the United States in low voter participation. It is a culture of the “apathetic mindset” that Sprengel intends to reverse.
