By Julie Fustanio and John Shea
Medill News Service
WASHINGTON - In the aftermath of the lowest national voter turnout since 1924, the debate over why so many Americans stayed home has largely focused on this year’s candidates and issues.
But for five of those Americans who skipped going to the polls Tuesday, the issue wasn’t the political landscape as much as a deeply held skepticism of the process.
“I’d like to see the government work for little people like me,” said Kathy Smith, a homemaker and volunteer from Olympia, Wa.
Paula Ryan, a Phoenix mortgage processor, said party labels get in the way of practical solutions.
“What is a liberal? What is a conservative? They’re all basically the same,” Ryan said. “Whatever face they feel the public wants to see and will vote for, that’s what they’ll be. Why can’t we get rid of these labels and concentrate on making laws and getting the job done?”
Frances Fox Piven, the author of “Why Americans Don’t Vote,” also is concerned that the continuing drop in voters turnout portends elections decided by a minority whose concerns are dramatically different than those of nonvoters.
Said Michael Keegan, a Norristown, Pa., stone mason who hunted on election day:
“It’s about time that this country see that some of us are not voting not because we don’t want to vote, but because we have no one to vote for. … It’s got to make some changes. And how can you make changes if you’re just going along with this process as it is now?”
Curtis Gans, the director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, said the election victors “have essentially no mandate,” because 76 percent of the voting-age population did not vote for President Clinton and 79 percent didn’t vote for a Republican Congress.
“It was a mandateless election,” he said. “It was also an election that portended an increasing weakening of the civic impulse.”
On Tuesday, only 49 percent of voting-age Americans went to the polls, the lowest turnout since 50.1 percent in 1924, Gans said. Since 1960, there has been a 22 percent decline in voter turnout, according to census data on the number of eligible voters. The average turnout in presidential elections dating to 1930 has been 56 percent.
Some believe nonvoters are a monolith of poor, unmotivated, uneducated people. But a survey by the Medill News Service this summer of 1,001 likely nonvoters found there are five types of people who don’t vote - and they’re just as likely to go to Harvard, coach Little League and attend school board meetings as voters are.
And on Election Day, interviews with a nonvoter from each group, described below, reinforced what the summer survey found.
— “Doers” (29 percent), like Sue Jablonsky, 35, are the largest block of non-voters. They’re young, college educated, and somewhat involved in their communities. Like many of those surveyed, Jablonsky is dispirited by the political process and the people involved. “I wish there was someone worth voting for,” she said.
— “Unpluggeds” (27 percent), like Paula Ryan, 42, are disproportionately young and don’t follow current events through the media. They are generally more skeptical than the Doers and are less likely to volunteer time to charity. Ryan may be unplugged from media outlets, but she is not out of touch. “They media are all biased,” she said. “They’re all Democratic views.” She watched C-Span and talks with her husband, co-workers and neighbors to keep up with current events.
— “Irritables” (18 percent), unlike Unpluggeds, are avid information consumers that are angry. They are older than the “Unpluggeds” and the “Doers,” think the country is on the “wrong track” and overwhelmingly agree that “most elected officials don’t care what people like me think.”
They’re like Michael Keegan, 40, who hopes that by not voting, he sent a strong message to the government this election about the quality of the candidates.
— “Don’t Knows” (14 percent) largely ignore politics and public affairs. But as
Richard Hobby, 43, watched television Tuesday, he said. “This country does not offer anything to anyone that’s lower-class.”
— Kathy Smith, 31, is a typical “Alienated” (12 percent). They are angry like the Irritables, yet removed like the Don’t Knows. Smith has never voted and believes that the country is on the wrong track. “If you ask my opinion, I’d like Mickey Mouse to win,” she said.
Ruy Teixeira, director of the Economic Policy Institute, said people were even more turned off than he thought they would be. He predicted that Clinton might have won by a wider margin if there was a higher voter turnout, but whether Republicans still would have controlled Congress is harder to call. “I don’t think the results would be dramatically different,” he said.
Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based political think tank, agreed that the effect of more people going to the polls would be minimal. “If everyone voted, it would not have altered the outcome of past elections,” he said.
Whether the views of voters and nonvoters differ, however, is another question. “If you look at the preferences, for say presidential candidates among voters and nonvoters, typically there is very little difference,” Mann said.
But Piven said, “Results would be different if everyone voted.”
“What we really have to worry about is a political system that ignores the concerns of the nonvoter,” she said.
Also contributing to this story were Michael Fielding, Rod Hicks and Siobhan Hughes.