Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 21, 1993 TAG: 9302220255
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
HIGHS AND LOWS OF VOTER TURNOUT
IN HIS address last week to Congress, Bill Clinton focused - if not like a laser beam, then at least like a heckuva powerful spotlight - on the national economy and his plan to improve its long-term prospects.But the speech wasn't devoted exclusively to economic issues. He also mentioned his continuing support for campaign-reform and "motor voter" legislation now in Congress - two measures that could, among other things, significantly improve voter turnout in America.
An estimated 55 percent of adult Americans voted in the November election that sent Clinton to the White House. That was up by 5 percentage points from 1988, and the highest percentage since 1972.
Which mainly goes to show how pitiful voter turnouts in America have become. That much-ballyhooed 55 percent is still poor, whether measured against typical turnout figures in most of the world's other advanced democracies or against U.S. turnouts earlier in the century.
Now comes statistical evidence, from the Institute of Southern Studies in Durham, N.C., to suggest that low turnout is linked to (1) how easy it is to register and vote, and (2) how hard it is for big money to buy elections.
Neither of those points is exactly new, of course, or counterintuitive. It stands to reason that if you make it harder for people to vote, fewer people will. And if your campaign-finance laws are so wide open that the system in effect is legal bribery, you'd expect elections to alienate rather than attract ordinary citizens.
Indeed, the rise in turnout in '92 is often attributed to the candidacy of Ross Perot - who, despite (or because of) immense personal wealth, was perceived by many as a citizens' candidate unbought by campaign contributors.
What's interesting about the institute's state-by-state comparison is the extent to which the two factors, ease of voting and strictness of campaign-finance rules, seem to boost turnout.
States with characteristically high turnouts - Minnesota, Maine, Montana, Wisconsin, the Dakotas, Iowa, Oregon, Connecticut - are generally also states with relatively easy voter-registration and absentee-voting rules, or with relatively tight campaign-finance laws, or both. States with characteristically low turnouts - including, alas, Virginia - tend also to be states with less user-friendly voting laws and laxer campaign rules.
The turnout differences from state to state are not trivial. In Minnesota, for example, turnouts in presidential elections routinely approach, and sometimes surpass, 70 percent. At the other end of the scale, turnouts in South Carolina are generally around, and sometimes less than, 40 percent.
The correlation is far from absolute. Utah and Idaho are high-turnout (60-65 percent) states with lax campaign-finance standards by the institute's lights. Arizona is a low-turnout state (averaging less than 48 percent in the past four presidential elections) with strong campaign-finance laws.
But the '92 turnout in Arizona was about at the national average, up sharply from years past - and the strength of its campaign-finance rules is the result of recent reforms. And given the strength of the Mormon church in their political cultures, perhaps Utah and Idaho are able to maintain a respectably high level of political ethics without formal laws.
Virginia, according to the institute, ranked 37th last year in voter turnout, advancing a bit from previous years. That, however, is better than what might be expected: By the institute's way of figuring it, campaign regulation in Virginia is weak, and the state's registration and absentee-voting rules are as burdensome as any in America.
Virginians are voting, a skeptic might surmise, even though their leaders would just as soon they didn't.