Odyssey

1998 is an election year in Illinois, but voter turnout has been in steady decline for 30 years. I'm Gretchen Halfridge, and today on Odyssey, we'll take a look at who's most likely to vote and who isn't. The difference may not be as great as you think. A lot of non-voters are well-informed about issues, and believe elections make a difference. So what keeps them from the polls? We'll also ask what difference low voter turnout really makes in an election, and what it says about the state of our democracy. Tune in and join in. We'll be taking your calls today on Odyssey. From National Public Radio News in Washington, I'm Craig Windham.

Former Democratic Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro has announced a bid to unseat New York Republican senator Alfonso de Motto. He has already signaled what kind of campaign he intends. We see it in his continuing assault on teachers. We saw it with personal attacks on me, even before I decided to become a candidate. Ferraro served three terms in Congress before giving up her seat to be the Democratic Vice Presidential nominee in 1984. She was the first woman ever nominated by Major Party for National Office six years ago for our loss to bitter Senate primary race. There's been a surprise this morning at the opening of the trial of accused unibommer Theodore Kazinski in Sacramento, Kazinski asked to make a statement to the judge who immediately called to recess to meet with Kazinski privately. Last month, Kazinski twice met with the judge in the case in an attempt to fire his attorneys, Kazinski objected to their intention to use an insanity defense. The lawyers have since withdrawn their notice of intent to use such a defense in the guilt or innocence phase of the trial.

Kazinski entered the courtroom today. He refused to acknowledge the presence of his brother and mother who were sitting in the front row. They began crying as he turned his back on them and sat at the defendant's table. The jury in the Terry Nichols trial is expected to begin its deliberations on his sentence after closing arguments today. The jury convicted Nichols of involuntary manslaughter and conspiracy for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing. Now the jury must decide whether he should get the death penalty. After a Steve Fawcett is safe on the ground in Russia after he ended his attempt to become the first person to fly a balloon around the world nonstop. As David McGuffin reports, Fawcett touched down near the coast of the Black Sea this morning. According to Russia's border guards, American Steve Fawcett's balloon made a soft landing 53 miles northwest of the southern Russian town of Krasnodar, officials at Fawcett's mission control in St. Louis say they have confirmation of this report. The sparsely populated region where Fawcett came down as a marshy territory in between the resort areas of Russia's Black Sea coast and the Caucasus Mountains. Fawcett's trip came to an end due to technical problems, a low fuel supply and unfavorable

winds. Russia's border guards say they got into contact with Fawcett as he crossed the Black Sea. They said he was a welcome if unexpected guest. The 53-year-old Fawcett, a Chicago commodities trader, began his attempt at the nonstop round the world balloon trip last Wednesday in St. Louis. Despite the failure of his mission, the trip will go into the record books as the second longest nonstop balloon trip in history. He set the record for the longest last year. For NPR News, I'm David McGuffin in Moscow. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won narrow approval for his budget in Parliament today, but after the resignation of Foreign Minister David Levy yesterday, Netanyahu's government is left with a thinnest of majorities in the Kinesit. On Wall Street at this hour, the Dow Jones industrial average is up 68 points in heavy trading on the Nasdaq, the composite index is up nearly 17 points. This is NPR News. In NPR's business update, the stock market is higher in very active trading today as Bloomberg's Doug Christner reports. Today's advance has been inspired by a drop in long-term interest rates, which fell to

five-year lows after Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan suggested over the weekend that lower rates may be needed to combat the effects of falling prices. The market is also being supported by a list of mergers. In the regional phone industry, SBC communications is expanding beyond the Southwest through the acquisition of Southern New England Telecommunications Corp at a price of $4.4 billion in stock. And nursing home operator met a trust company's, is venturing into the hotel industry. The company is buying La Quinta Inn's for about $3 billion in cash. I'm Doug Christner. The government says construction spending fell nine-tenths of a percent in November. That's the worst drop in nearly a year. The Commerce Department says spending was pulled down by slumps in commercial and government projects. President Clinton meets with his advisors at the White House in an hour to work on the proposed budget he'll submit to Congress early next month. In a public statement at the start of the session, Mr. Clinton is expected to reiterate

what White House officials were saying yesterday on television talk shows that it's too early to talk about tax cuts. Black in Netscape is off more than 20 percent today, after the software maker announced that its fourth quarter earnings will be below what Wall Street estimates had been. The company makes one of the leading internet browser programs, Netscape expects to cut its workforce and close some facilities to get back on track. The company expects to post a loss, excluding charges of between 15 and 19 cents a share. I'm Craig Windham, National Public Radio News in Washington. Good friend PR, comes from Borders Books and Music, putting a world of knowledge within your reach, with over 200 locations across America, 800-644-7733. Good morning.

Happy New Year and welcome to Odyssey, another new addition to the programming lineup here on WV EZ. I'm Gretchen Helfrich and on this program, my producer Joshua Andrews and I hope to engage not just your ears but your voice as well. Our Odyssey will take us from pressing issues to fascinating people, to thrilling discoveries, to some good old fashioned conversation. We hope you'll come along on the journey every day here on Odyssey on Chicago's Public Radio Station WV EZ Chicago 91.5 FM. On today's program, we're going to take a look at voting in this country. Just an election year here in Illinois, this November we will choose a new governor, lieutenant governor, state representatives in short the bulk of our state government and a U.S. Senator. The Declaration of Independence tells us that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the government. In recent years though, more and more of us are consenting with our silence. In 1994, the last time we chose a governor, there were just over 6,100,000 registered voters. About 3,100,000, or a little more than half, actually cast a ballot. And that's not counting eligible voters who are not registered.

When they are included, participation rates drop even further. Fewer than half of eligible voters participated in the presidential election in 1996. The low numbers are part of a decline that has been going on for over 30 years. What is keeping people from the polls and what might bring them back? Just how much non-participation can a democracy tolerate? These are some of the questions we're going to look at today and later in the program we would like to hear your questions and comments. Here in the studio to talk about this today, our Gene Brink representing the League of Women Voters. She's the Illinois Chair of the League's Making Democracy Work project. We are also joined by Ryan Chu, who is Director of Voter Registration for Cook County Clerk David Orr. And we are joined by ISDN from Washington by Ellen Shearer, Associate Professor of Journalism at Northwestern University and the editor of the Midil News Service. She is co-authoring a book along with Jack Doppled at Northwestern called No Shows, How the Other Half Live Without Voting. Good morning to all of you and thank you very much for joining me today. Good morning Gretchen. Good morning.

Ellen, you can hear us there in Washington? Yes, I can hear you fine. Okay, let's start with you. Can I ask you to describe you were involved in a study a year and a half ago about non-voters, their attitudes, their behaviors, their feelings about voting and elections and the picture that emerged from your study was a lot more complex than I think most people would expect it to be. Can you outline what you found about the attitudes and feelings of people who are not voting? Sure. And I think you've identified the key point that we found in our survey, we had decided that we wanted to talk to non-voters because most pollsters don't. And what we found was that they're really not who we thought they were going to be. There are a lot like voters or a lot more than we expected them to be. First, I'm going to ask you by just telling us, what did you think they were going to be like? Well, I think the stereotype is that they're kind of out of touch people who leave their decisions to others, maybe uninformed, less educated. A lot of those stereotypes, we found to be untrue.

In fact, it's true that they are as a group younger and poorer than the population as a whole, but despite that, 18% are college-educated and 40% are more than $30,000. And 25% are over 45, so what we felt was critical if we're going to address the issue of why people don't vote is to stop looking at half of the voting age population as a single entity. We wanted to get inside and find out who they were as individuals. Can you talk a little bit about the difference? You divided non-voters into roughly into five cluster groups who demonstrated similar attitudes. Can you just broadly give us a sense of those profiles? Sure. The largest group we called the doers, and they were 29% of the total group of non-voters we talked to.

They're young, they're fairly affluent, earning more than $30,000 a year, college-educated. They follow what's going on in government. And what I found really interesting is they volunteer, they call or write politicians or their local media, so they believe that if they voted, their vote would count. They think people would listen to them if they wanted to be heard. And in fact, they're likely to say that they will vote, but they're not registered. So I found them the most intriguing group because they look so much like voters, yet there's something that keeps them away from the polls. Do you, were you able to figure out what that was or was it just one thing? Well, I think it's not just one thing. Again, once you get inside non-voters, you realize that there are a lot of differences among them, and I think any approach that says one solution is going to be these solutions won't work.

For instance, making registration easier or making voting easier. That didn't seem to be one of the big reasons that kept people away from the polls. Probably the biggest single reason was that they weren't interested in politics. So making it easier won't change that. There briefly, what are some of the other groups you described the doers for? Let me ask you a question about the doers first. Is it your sense? The doers, I noticed, tended to be younger on average than the other groups of non-voters. Is that right? Correct. Do you expect that the doers eventually are going to be voters? They may be people who come in and out of the voting process. I think there may be issues where they would go to the polls, but again, the disconnect is very profound. They just don't consider voting necessarily the best way of making their voice heard. I think a lot, it's almost time management. These seem like kind of young yuppies. They may think their time is better spent volunteering or writing a letter rather than going

to the polls. But now you did find some non-voters who really do fit the profile that people have, I think, as a perception of both alienated and apathetic groups. We called one group the alienated, but it was the smallest group, only 12% of the thousand non-voters we talked to. The alienated were the oldest group, less affluent, very negative view of government. Don't read newspapers or watch news shows on TV and we're the most likely to already have decided when we talked to them before the election last in 1996 that they would not vote. They don't know the second smallest group, at 14%, again, over 45 years old, generally, so little older, less affluent, less educated. We called them the don't know us because that's what they were more likely than others

to say they didn't know when we asked their political opinions. They really leave the decisions to others. So they're probably the closest to, I guess, what I had thought of as the stereotype. And then you had a group you called the irritables. Yeah, the irritables are 18% of the total. They're affluent, older, but unlike doers, they don't think their vote will count. And while they're the biggest information consumer group among ours, they are very negative, very irritated with politics, and they choose not to vote. They're very clear that they're choosing not to vote. Was that the only group that was making a conscious choice not to vote? Well overall, among non-voters of those who said that they hadn't voted in 1992, 45% said they were choosing not to vote, and I don't know what you do about people who say they're

choosing not to vote. Well, we're going to talk a little more about that later on. Let me ask you to talk briefly about the last group, the unplugged. Sure, the unplugged was the second largest group at 27% of the total, and their demographics were very similar to the doers, they're young, they're affluent. But unlike the doers, they don't discuss politics, they don't volunteer, they're not as connected to their communities, and they're not following what's going on. It seems that from these five separate profiles, other than the fact that these groups all represent people who aren't choosing to vote, there doesn't seem to be strong links among the five groups. There doesn't seem to be some deeper motivation underlying all of them that would explain their non-voting behavior. Well, I think if there's a common theme, it's this disconnection from, I guess, what the

impact, just a disconnection between their vote and their life. They just don't see that part of the American political process as something that they need to do to be good citizens. At this point, let me bring some of our other guests into the conversation. We're also joined in the studio by Jean Brink, who is with the League of Women Voters. She's the Illinois Chair of the Leagues Making Democracy Work Project. We're also joined by Ryan Chu, Director of Voter Registration for Cook County Clark David or Jean, can I ask you to comment on what you've heard from Ellen, does that match up with your experience about why people are voting and not voting? Pretty much, it's interesting, I hadn't read Ellen's report prior to this. The League, the National League, also did a survey in 1994 because the League was very concerned about the lack of involvement of the citizenry and, of course, when the consent

of the governed is not being given and the League's mission, of course, is citizen participation in government and being an educated voter. We also did a survey back in 1994 about voting and non-voting and started a program that we've now been doing for two years, which is not the League's standard way of conducting business. Normally, we have certain issues that we are working specifically on, whether that's for legislatively and, of course, with us, everything is both on a national, a state, and a local level. The Making Democracy Work campaign is very similar to a campaign that the League did back after the McCarthy era when there was a similar disconnect between citizens and distrust between citizens and their government and what was going to happen. We very specifically did this as a result of the survey and this is a really a five-pronged

campaign and we really feel, based on the information in our survey, that there is a great need to increase voter participation, that that is dependent largely, legislatively on reforming campaign finance and that the other three elements that need to be addressed in order to get that voter participation is to expand our citizens' civic education and their knowledge about how their government works, to try to see what we can do about enhancing the diversity of representation of our elected officials so that it does, in fact, our elected officials represent the face of the population at large, whether that be minority representation or women or whatever it may be in the particular community. From the lead standpoint, was that issue of diversity of representation, something that specifically came about as a result of information you got from the survey or is that

more broadly? When you look at the, no, when you look at the statistics about the comparing elected representatives or even appointed ones on committees and commissions locally, you find that there is not, there is not, it is not reflect the face of the populace. I have that information here, I could get it for you in a minute when it's where I am starting to go. That was something that people have particularly expressed as a reason that they feel disconnected whether diversity is something that has not been done. I don't know, I don't know that, but certainly I think that if you have people representing you who do not represent who you are, where you come from, that is certainly going to have an effect on whether you go to vote. I mean, there are more than 50% of the populace are women. What is the statistics in our representative government?

It's not anywhere near that. And the same can be said for minority groups and I think that what, because what we found in our survey was that people did not have a personal connect to why it would be important to them to vote. Ryan, can I ask you to jump in here? Sure. Yeah. Actually, I want to first thank the League and Allen and Medill School at Northwestern for their studies. We actually use a lot of this type of analysis in crafting our registration and our voter education programs. I'd like to start by talking a little bit about the history of voter turnout in this country because I think it'll show us that there's a problem, but perhaps not a crisis. It's important to go back over the long term and really look. If you go back to the 40s, the 30s, you know, and Allen mentioned the McCarthy era, actually 1948 was the lowest about the lowest voter turnout in this century of about 51.2%. That was the lowest until this last year when we went down to about 49%.

In between, we had a big peak up through 1960, went about 65% of the voting age population turned out. So what it suggests is it is a problem, we need to figure out why people don't vote. But perhaps it's not a crossroads for democracy. It's happened before. We will get out of this if we follow the leads of studies like this. Go ahead. The second thing I want to mention is that what we've seen over the last 30 years is the nationalization of voter turnout patterns. In 1960, what you found is about 20 to 25, 30% of the Southern voting age population turned out, of course, because blacks weren't allowed to vote or were discouraged from voting in a variety of forceful ways. The Voting Rights Act first and now the Motor Voter Act have nationalized the patterns so that now you see that about 47 to 45 to 47% of Southern voters turn out or eligible voters and about 50% to 55% of Northern voters. But the patterns have come a lot closer as the laws have said registration will be easy.

We will allow you and then as the federal government has gone in and enforced those laws and said no, you must. I don't know if you know here in Illinois, we had to sue the governor to get the state to adapt motor voter. Finally one point that I'd like to make in sort of the broad context is you often hear that young voters are the least likely to turn out. And that is certainly true. I do however want to emphasize it is not a generational problem. It has always been the same 20 year olds in 1960 were much less, well, 22 year olds because of course the voting age was different. We're much less likely to vote 22 year olds in 1970 and 22 year olds today. The largest percentage of young people to vote in a presidential election since 1970 was in 1992. So it is not just a pattern of apathetic youth, it's just that there are other reasons that young people are perhaps less likely to be engaged and involved in voting. What do you think, this question is directed at all three of you, what do you think would

be a healthy level of voter turnout? I mean allowing for the fact that choosing not to vote must be a rational alternative, a reasonable alternative for many people, people could certainly reasonably come to the conclusion that in a given election it will do no good for them to vote. So that's obviously got to be an option, but what would you consider to be a healthy level of participation? Ryan, do you want to start? I would like to see us return to the levels of the 60s to 65 and 70%. I mean a big chunk of the Northern electorate has fallen out in the last 30 years, about 25% of the electorate. I think we could get back up to 70%. Do you have a specific goal that they want to see 85% voter turnout by the next national election? By the year 2000? Do you think that's where that's quite a jump in participation? Of course it's reasonable, we should all be participating in our government. Ellen Scheer, what would you think would be a level that would not raise concern?

Well, I think that Ryan makes a good point that in years where like 1960, a clear difference between the candidates, those are the years where the levels go up and those are, I think that's probably the level we should be looking at, so it would be nice to see participation more at 70%, 75%. There's perhaps another way of looking at this is to think about the 80s in Chicago when turnout in national elections was going down as it was nationwide, however mayoral elections were seeing turnout higher than we've seen before since. And the reason is as Ellen points out, you had candidates very different, you know, unfortunately to some degree it was probably a racial polarization, but it connected with voters in two ways. First there was that difference that Ellen talks about just on an issue and on a separation of what the candidate stood for.

Second, there was just a real engagement of pop culture. You had, you had rap and other artists coming in to say this is very important in the black community. You had this surge of emotion and I think what that did is it connected both with sort of the alienates and the irritables on the one hand and some of the unplugged to use the Medil studies terminology. Do you know what I wanted to ask you, the making democracy work project is premised on the notion that these, the trends that you're seeing in politics, the five different things that you saw going on that you talked about at the beginning of the program are an indication that our democracy is in ill health, that they need to be remedied, they need to be addressed. And I was wondering what, I mean, we hear people talk a lot about how awful it is that voter turnout is so low. But what, is it possible to know what specific effect that is having on either the types of candidates who are getting elected or the quality of government that we're getting?

I mean, is, is the turnout, is that the problem or is it a symptom of a larger problem? Well, I think it's a symptom of a larger problem. I think that the reason that we have these five components to the campaign is I don't know how you, they are interconnected. If you are only able to run for office, if you have access to incredible amounts of money, whether that's through the leadership in the legislators who control a lot of the money or however, I mean, listen to one legislator who talked about what it took her to raise money on her own, that she didn't get from these larger organizations and it was literally sitting every day with headphones, a speaker phone on, like we're sitting here, making one phone call after another and it was incredible that she could do it, but how many people can really do that? And if you can't, if, you know, if, theoretically, where anybody is supposed to be able

to run for office, I mean, this is so interwoven with, and then of course, when people know that who's paying for the campaigns and who they feel the politicians are answerable to are the great big organizations that are giving them money, then they feel that they don't have a voice. My personal, on a personal level, I also feel that we really need to look at the education part of this, that there are, I think already, a couple of generations have gone past where they did not even in, within their school experience, did not, I'm 50 years old and I know that when I went to school, I had civic civics and government were taught to me and I don't think that's happened in our schools for all of the children, for several generations, so now you have, you have a generation of school whose parents did

not have that experience and so did not have that, they can't pass it on to their children if they don't know it either, the teachers in the schools can't do that if they didn't have that experience either, and then when you look at it more broadly, if citizens do not know how to access their government, how to make it work for them, then, you know, this all feeds together and of course we are concerned about the, we discussed briefly the diversity of representation, but it also affects citizens' ability to participate if they don't have participation skills, you know, if they don't aren't the ones going out there and participating in whatever it happens to be that's important to them, you know, that all works together, I like the point you're making, I'd like to take it perhaps in two directions, one is to talk about the education component, how important it is, we've done a lot of voter registration in high schools in David Orr's office,

I should mention we're the election authority, so we are the official county voter registration office. We go out to high schools and train students themselves as registrars and they fan out through the school and register their classmates and we think it does two things that improve on the old method, it takes 15 or 20 kids in every high school and tells them an awful lot about the system and then they can forever after communicate it to their classmates, but also when they approach fellow students, it says this is something other young people are doing, it's not just something mom or those talk show people on the radio want you to do, and we've had a lot of success with that, but also what we've found is the huge variation from school to school and the biggest reason being that you'll get a teacher who is emphasizing how important this is, putting it in its context and so what that says is you can have an effect on voter turnout rates by working on education and the other is that there's a social context to voting, that you don't vote as an individual who just

watches TV and says oh yeah that sounds right, you vote because you watch TV and you hear something or you read the news and you hear something, then you mention it to your friend who said... process because that's one problem and then we're also trying to address the children where that's in high school or in grade school because we have found that a lot of the problem is that people don't actually know how to use the machines and for the adults it's like I don't know how to use this machine and I think that once you become an adult for some people he comes in intimidating process you know, I know of several programs that have started in pilot programs that have started, that different leagues have started across the country for fifth and sixth graders where they're really giving them hands

on experiences of being trained to vote as by the election judges and going through and I don't think those kids are ever going to have a problem or they're going to be the voters because they already have a good idea of how this affects them. We have to take a break in just a minute, Ellen Cheer, but I did want to bring you back into the conversation because I wanted to ask you, you stated earlier that non voters tend to look a lot like voters, are they just leaving it up to the voters or are we actually being heard by the fact that these people aren't participating? One thing I did want to mention is our survey and others have shown that on public policy issues non voters' opinions are not markedly different than the population as a whole so one could argue they're being represented by their fellow citizens who do vote. I don't know that I'd argue that because I think their demographic characteristics are different enough that if these people did become voters, they might make a difference.

Okay, we need to take a break, but when we come back, I want to talk about some of the possible, some of the ideas that are being floated around to increase participation and also take some calls from the folks at home. Our number is 312-832-3124-312-832-3124. Give us a call if you have a question or a comment on the issue of voter participation. We'd like to hear from you. We'll be back in just a minute. This is Odyssey on WBZ Chicago. Broadcasting from the Lehman Family Public Radio Center at Chicago's Navy Pier. This is Chicago's Public Radio Station, 91.5 FM, WBZ Chicago. If one of your new year's resolutions is to get serious about putting some money away for your retirement, tune in to the next fresh air. I guess we'll be Mary Rowland, author of the new book, A Common Sense Guide to your 401k. I'm Terry Gross.

Join us for the next fresh air. You can hear fresh air this afternoon at 2 o'clock right after talk of the nation. On WBZ Chicago. This is Chicago's Public Radio Station, 91.5 FM, WBZ Chicago. You're listening to Odyssey. I'm Gretchen Helfrich, and we're talking today about voter turnout, voter participation. My guests are Gene Brink with the League of Women Voters, the Illinois Chair of the Making Democracy Work Project, Ryan Chu, Director of Voter Registration for Cook County Clerk, David Orr, and Ellen Shearer, joining us by ISDN from Washington. She is Associate Professor of Journalism at Northwestern, Editor of the Medill New Service and she is co-authoring a new book called No Shows, How the Other Half Live Without Voting. First, let me ask you when the book is coming out. We expect that the book will be coming out probably early 1999. Okay. Let's talk about some of the ideas that have been floated around for increasing voter

participation. One of the issues that always comes up is registration, which seems to play something of a role, although maybe there's a tendency to give it more weight than it should have, but ease of registration and ease of participation. Ryan, let me start with you. That's your area. Sure. And I think there are sort of two categories that this question falls into. Registration in the last 10 years has gotten a lot simpler. In 1980, you had to go down to City Hall or to your village hall, and it was a real hassle. And with first, the voter registrar law, which is the law that's allowed a lot of volunteers to fan out on the streets, usually on behalf of candidates, but or to sit in your jewel or Dominic's store, has helped a lot. Second, voter voter puts an opportunity for people to register right in front of them when they go and get their driver's license, and that's something that the league worked with us a lot on. And that has really changed it so that it's not a difficult thing. However, again, there's a context to registration, so that you'll see organizations that

will organize, say, you're going to see in the next few months a rap contest where they're asking young people to create a rap, and that's about voter registration, and then there's going to be a big rally. That's something that's designed to say, hey, even though it's easy, we need to excite people about it without giving it really a partisan cast, the sort of rock the vote way of looking at registration. Ellen Shearer, you talked about this at the beginning of the show, but could I ask you to let us know, again, from the results of the work that you've done, how critical a factor is registration, ease of registration, that issue to those who don't vote? Well, among the non-voters, we talked to only 11% said they had recently moved, 66% said they lived at their address more than two years, so plenty of time to register, but yet of those, 61% were not registered, and again, of those who had lived in their residence for more than two years, I didn't understand the last statistic, right, and overall, among

those who were not registered, only 14% said the reason they weren't was that they had moved recently, again, a larger proportion said that it was because they weren't interested in politics, so I mean, I do think making it easier. You'll get some people, but I don't think it's going to be the salvation. Ellen had said earlier that there are going to be a variety of small approaches that will solve this problem for each category, and I think that's really the way to look at registration is it may help some of the doers category, it may also mean that some of the other categories will happen to register at a driver's license facility, and then six months later, they'll get excited about something, and they'll have the opportunity because they've already registered. And Gene Brink registration has always been an important part of the league's mission. That's a lot of what we do, and of course, like I said earlier, it's also very important that we want people to be educated about whom they're going to be voting for and why.

And in the last, in the 96th election, we had a huge get out the vote effort. The survey that I alluded to earlier had indicated that there were three categories of voters who were underrepresented at the polls, those being younger people, minorities and low income, and so leagues on a local, to national level, devise different strategies to reach those populations in their community and basically worked in coalition with other groups because we have found that that is really, I mean, democracy has to work for everyone, so obviously it's not one organization who's going to do this, and it's not only important to a few organizations, it's important to everyone, but we are really finding that in working in coalition with groups that represent those populations, that we're having a lot more success. All right, let's take some calls. Let's talk with Doris.

Doris, you're on WBEZ. Good morning. Yes, good morning. I'm one of those that has always voted, I voted in all the primaries, and I've never missed voting, no matter what happened, and I'm not going to vote this time, unless I get a candidate I'd like. There's one thing, there was a candidate, I believe it was on the West Coast that came up with none of the above, and if you don't get 50% or so of the candidate of the votes that they have to run another election later on, I think that that would be another way that I would get in the voting vote, but I'll tell you, I belong to the legal and the voters, I belong to Common Cause, but I am so disillusioned with the garbage they're giving us the vote for. We have no choice. What's the point of going in? The only reason why I've gone in the last couple of years is because I wanted my neighborhood to be represented if I wrote a letter, but I'll tell you, I've worked for candidates, and I've worked for more than one candidate, and yet I just throw up my hands on 66 years old, who needs it.

So this is not going to do any good. This is the first time you're not going to vote, but this is not the first election where you've felt dissatisfied with your choices. Ever since they changed the primary, the primary where they have these different districts and different states that they hit, that's the only thing they care about. They go to the different states, they make sure they get a vote when they're, and I mean it's all set up, it's a big set up, and they want us to come out and make it look good. Well, I give up. I really give up. I'll help some candidate, I'll write, and in the last time I voted, I went in and I voted for one person. The rest, I said to hell with them, they're no good. This will sound funny, but Doris, I want to say that that's great that you went in and voted for one person, and first of all, didn't add an extra vote for a lot of people that you didn't think were good, and second of all, I wish more people would go in and decide if they're not real satisfied with the candidates at the top level, maybe they'll make a darn sure that somebody at the school board level gets a lot of votes and gets in there

who is good, because those are the people who are going to move up. We find in studies, for instance, at Taste of Chicago, and this is not a scientific sampling, but we did a voter quiz. We call it the things that you should have to know to register to vote, but you don't have to, and we found that about 15 percent of the people who came to our table, whoever they were, could identify the speaker of the state house of representatives, and about a similar 15 percent could identify paid Philip, the president of the state senate. At that level of knowledge, accountability is not, it's very difficult to hold people accountable if you're not really sure who they are and what you should be voting on. I'm glad that Doris maintains that she is going to do something at a low level to make sure the system's more accountable. Doris, can I ask you a question? What do you think, is there anything specific that you think is causing the decline in quality of candidates and what do you think? I know it happened just about the time when they started having these different states like Iowa, or where they got the power, and it just evolved.

You mean when the primaries were called, so when they were, the horse race got called so early? Yes. Yes. I think that's a big factor. I'll tell you, we got to have campaign finance of reform. There's no question about the campaign finance reform would help somewhat. But the thing is, I think on the West Coast, it might have been California, it might have been Ralph Nader. Ralph Nader will think of it on our ballot here, which was a shame, and that said none of the above, and if you didn't get a certain percentage, they'd have to call another election in 30 days. I brought that up before, and they said, well, you do have a choice, vote for the third candidate or the fourth candidate. I did that. What happened? He got in office. She was a little she. And I said, son of a guy, I don't like these people. I want to vote for this, but we're a little she. And it doesn't work. It doesn't work besides what's the point of it unless there's a penalty for them not giving us a decent candidate.

The only thing, there's another thing, if Gepphart gets it, if Gepphart is on the ballot, I'll vote for him. Okay, Doris, thanks a lot for calling this morning. Let's take another call, let's talk to Lionel. Lionel, good morning, you're on WV-E-Z. Good morning. Thank you for taking my call. Sure. So you don't feel motivated to vote, either? No. The last time I voted, I voted for my favorite cartoon characters. When was the last time you voted? I believe it worked election before last. So you think you skipped one election? Yes. Why don't you feel motivated to vote? Is it the candidates like Doris Setter? Is it the issues? Well, first of all, there's a rack of choice ideologically. It seems like everyone is pretty much able to fit into the same sort of shoes. And there's not any kind of big change happening or a choice parent that would make any sort of change, so that would mean anything to me. I think back in the 60s, we saw a really big, it seemed like there was a really big difference between the candidates.

And there was a big issue that was a Vietnam War, but when you don't have an issue, like these days with the election of our mayor here in town who if you figure out the exact percentage of the way he won in terms of the registered voters, it came down to 11 percent. So here, a landslide of 11 percent and got in. And our neighborhood, all of the rummies and the people who were trying to buy some sort of protection from going to jail for various reasons, were all around the streets making some money, pushing for his, it's all the man at candidate who ran on a post and got a big landslide too of maybe 20 percent of the vote. So when you look at a situation like that where things are so cut and dried, I have to agree with Doris and say, you know, what is the point? And so there's a lack of possibility of participation in any way to influence things in any way and the only thing you can do is sort of check the Barrett Soviet style and get

what you get. And once you're, let me ask you something, we've just heard from two callers who are new non-voters. And I was wondering in your study of the people that you surveyed, I think if I read the study correctly, you were talking about people who were not going to vote in 96 and who hadn't voted in 92, either they didn't vote in 92, weren't registered or said they definitely wouldn't vote in 96. That's how we determined it non-voter. Did you have any sense of how long they had been non-voters, whether they had voted in the past and had stopped voting? Well among the people I've interviewed subsequent to the survey for the book, most of them are more likely to be long time non-voters, it's a pattern for them. However some of them are, what I like to call active non-voters, for instance, a man I talked to in Pennsylvania specifically registered so that people would know he was not voting on purpose.

In other words, if he's not registered, he can't vote, but if he registers, he could have voted so he again was trying to make the point that he's not going to give them whoever they are, his vote. I had a similar experience with a man in Denver, Colorado, on election day this past November, he went in and signed in to vote and in effect voted for no one, he submitted an empty ballot and that's his way of saying you can't have my vote. So not voting, I mean there's distinctly a group of non-voters who are not apathetic, they're not totally disinterested, their statement is, my vote, there's nothing for me to vote for. Exactly, exactly and I think your two callers were good examples of that. The idea of non-voters are more likely to say they're independent rather than Democrat or Republican and I think when they say that they mean independent of the process, it's not part of them and I think that's why they're saying you can't have my vote, again

some people, there are more than one reason for people to not vote, but a lot of people say they chose not to. I'm curious, Alan, I hear this a lot that there's no difference between the parties and I know in your study you found that some people said that others didn't, but I think you and I probably can identify those kind of differences, but a lot of times it's tough to know what will really happen, you know, will Clinton really act on his middle class tax break or will, and do you think it's really that there are no differences or that people aren't sure that the step of accountability is going to happen after the election that they'll really say, they'll really do what they say they intend to. Well, among in our survey, people did believe there was a difference between the Republican and Democratic parties and I think that's a difference, you know, you can talk about parties and then you can talk about the candidates before you and I think that's maybe what we're

getting to. Can I, we've just got a little bit of time left, but I definitely want to raise the issue of information because that's come up a lot in our conversation and a lot of people in your survey, large groups of people said that they didn't feel they had the information to vote, which I have to say personally, I find kind of astonishing given that there is so much information out there, but it seems like people don't feel like they're getting information that they can use, that they can, that helps them to make a choice, and I know Jean, your experience with the league has been that people want a particular kind of information. Right, it's both the, the, the voting information itself, you know, they, they actually don't know where, where to go, what you do when you get there, I mean, there's that, the, the mechanics of voting itself, and then there are the people who just don't know how to access the systems. They don't know that, you know, your, your opinion can be heard if you decide that you're going to run for the school board, run for the part district, you know, it all starts

locally, you know, it's all starts at the grassroots and having some, something that has, meaning to you, but I don't think people really know that they can carry through on that, and they also don't have basic information as, as Ryan said before about who, who people are, what they do, I mean, I, I know in our, some of our information, when we get back kids, I think we found that only 38% of AIDS graders in America know that Congress makes laws. What, what, in terms of making choices, in terms of making decisions in an election, I, I know, I mean, I've heard people say that, you know, you can read the paper all day long. You still don't get a sense of, of what's really going on, you can't sort it out. Things are really complex, maybe that's a tendency to blame the media for what's wrong, but, you know, that, that's one type of information, and maybe it's not all that useful to people. Yeah, there, there are two points I'd like to make. One is that even I, and I think probably

all of us in this conversation, we pay an awful lot of attention, and yet I have a lot of difficulty sometimes assessing motives, assessing what will really happen, assessing which are the sort of rhetorical planks of a, of a candidate, and which are the things that are really going to happen. So I, I really respect voters when they, when they say that they have difficulty, I, I don't see that as, as just a cap out necessarily. Now on a very small level, I want to mention a joint project that we're working on with the league, and that is our voter info net. The voter info net is going to be something that will solve some of these logistical problems and also a little bit of the information. You'll be able to go either on the internet or to a kiosk, which we're creating, which will be sort of a computer terminal that we can take with us to taste of Chicago or to malls and grocery stores. But anyway, you'll be able to type in your address, and it will, it will tell you based on your address where you're polling place is, everyone who's on the ballot in your area, and it will also

be linked to something which we've done in the past, just, just in the school board election was our pilot. That is the internet voter guide. The internet voter guide is something where every candidate on the ballot gets about 400 words to describe who they are and what they stand for, and you can look at this sort of compare them side by side, and, you know, while you look at your entire ballot. It's a small thing, but we think there are ways you can start to solve the information gap. We've just got a little bit of time left, but I definitely want to take at least one more call. Let's talk with Larry. Good morning, you're on BEZ. Good morning. I was calling into kind of kind of reinforced, which we're saying. I think basically I agree that that, you know, people are turned off by what's going on in politics. I think the power of the dollar is much more influential than the power of the voices of the people. I think partly it's a kind of a self-fulfilling privacy when you don't vote. Certainly you lose more power, but I think people are turned off because they see that

the influence of the individual and perhaps of organizations that decline in labor unions who are kind of the voice of the people, so to speak, rather than the voice of corporations for, you know, the big dollar, the big spenders, not that unions didn't do something to contribute in the past, but I think their influence has been diminished. So I think our influence of voice, we speak with a weaker voice at the polling places than we use to. I think people feel that. I sense that the politicians are, you know, they give lip service, perhaps, some more than others, to what the people want. But basically, I mean, they're influenced by the pressures that are put on them in a financial sense, and I think there's a lot to do with, you know, the cost of campaigning. I mean, that's that's certainly a good excuse, and I think there's some wish intimacy too. I think people that spend more money usually do better in the, you know, in the elections, and it's realistic, I mean, there's some.

Larry, you know, it's kind of interesting that you raise this point, and I'm always struck by this sense that voters seem to have, and it's, I mean, I think everyone has it that money is the most important factor in determining how a legislator behaves, at least, that it's more influential than votes. And yet, little anecdotal evidence, a couple of people that I know have worked for legislators in Washington, and they have said that nothing gets their legislator, their Senator of Congressman, working faster than a letter, a phone call, or something from a constituent. That's what got the moving, that's what got them voting. That was how they made their decisions, was checking in with those people, and that was, that was what it always came down to. And one guy knew he said if they were trying to convince their, their Congressman to, to vote a certain way, if the staff thought that he should vote a certain way, they'd find constituents to write letters to tell the Congressman to vote that way, so that he would think it was coming from a constituent. Now, that may be another problem, but the point is that, that his, his stories were that that is what was motivating this particular Congressman, and yet it seems like the perception all

around is that that's not the issue, and, and, and people feel like their voices aren't being heard. I also wonder how often constituents write in on appropriations fields, and some of the major legislation that might not get the kind of hot button issue, attend, attention that, say, you know, partial birth, birth abortion or something. I mean, I do think that, that money gets you in the door a lot more than a constituent letter. Well, on that unhappy note, unfortunately, I'm hoping to end it on an up note, but I guess not. I want to thank all of you for, for joining me this morning. My guests have been Gene Brink, representative of the League of Women Voters. She's the Illinois Chair of the Making Democracy Work Project, Ryan Chu, director of voter registration for Cook County Clerk David Orr. They joined me here in the studio, and joining us from Washington, Ellen Shearer, Associate Professor of Journalism at Northwestern, and editor of the Medell News Service. She is currently working on a book called No Shows, How the Other Half Live Without Voting, expected in early 1999. Thank you all very much for joining us on our maiden voyage.

Thanks so much. Thanks very much, Christian. Thank you. Well, that will do it for Odyssey for today. I'd like to thank all of our guests for their participation. Thanks to everyone who called and apologies to those whose calls we couldn't get to, a special thanks to Joshua Andrews, who's done a terrific job producing and directing and getting us to this point so far, and to Barry Winograd and to Carol Frieders, both for engineering today. We'll be back tomorrow talking about education in the state of Illinois. Should it be a legal right of all children? If it were, how would that change the landscape in our state? Tune in for that, and I hope you'll join in. Again, we'll be taking your calls again. I hope you enjoyed our show today, and I hope you enjoyed 848 as well. I'm looking forward to being here every day and talking with you, our listeners. I hope that you'll tune in so we can continue this conversation. World view is next with Jerome McDonald. Stay tuned. I'm Gretchen Helfridge, and you've been listening to Odyssey on WBEZ, Chicago.