Voter Turnout May Be Lowest in Decades : Experts Not Sure Jackson Drawing Power Will Boost Participation

WASHINGTON —  Four years ago, Elijah Cameron of Chattanooga, Tenn., watched in frustration as visitors at the community health center shuffled silently past the voter registration table that he had helped set up in the lobby. Only a few stopped out of curiosity.

But this year Cameron, a Medicaid specialist at the center, says registration workers there have been besieged by hundreds or even thousands of people--many of them laid-off industrial workers hit by plant closings--who want to know how to register.

The difference, Cameron says, is the Rev. Jesse Jackson. “The people seem to feel that Jesse has the backing and the charisma to put their plight ahead of the pack,” he said. “As blacks, we’ve been misused and abused, and I’m seeing a lot of people looking to Jesse as a kind of salvation.”

November Uncertainties

Still uncertain, however, is whether Jackson’s drawing power in this year’s Democratic primaries--he finished second only to nominee Michael S. Dukakis--will translate into a higher turnout in this November’s contest between Dukakis and Vice President George Bush, the presumed Republican nominee.

Many among those working to get out the vote are grimly projecting a renewal this year of a three-decade slide in voter participation in presidential elections. The Washington-based Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, which analyzed voting trends in this year’s primaries, concluded: “There is every likelihood that turnout in November will be both down and the lowest in 40 years.”

Only about half of the estimated 170 million eligible voters are likely to cast ballots in the presidential election, placing America near the bottom of Western democracies in electoral participation. In a country that boasted voter rates of more than 80% a century ago, about 65 million eligible Americans are not even registered today.

Efforts Scaled Back

Officials with both major parties expect to scale back their massive efforts of four years ago to get out the vote.

“One of the big problems is that there just are not the financial resources available to the parties this year that there were four years ago,” Christopher J. Bowman, political director of the Republican National Committee, said in an interview. In 1984, the RNC poured $4 million into voter registration, Bowman said, but this year the competitive Republican primary campaign soaked up most Republican Party resources.

Democratic Party officials also project a trimmed voter registration effort and fewer new voters for 1988. John Dean, director of the Democratic National Committee’s office of voter participation, said this year’s Super Tuesday megaprimary in the South on March 8 diverted candidates’ resources from voter registration to regional advertising.

Curtis B. Gans, director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, sees a very good possibility that turnout in November could drop to its lowest level since Harry S. Truman defeated Thomas E. Dewey in 1948, when 51.1% of eligible voters cast ballots.

‘No Burning Issues’

“There are no burning issues and, decent as the candidates may be, they are neither charismatic nor do they project vision,” Gans said. “And we have had a period in which it has seemed increasingly rational and respectable not to vote.”

Jackson’s candidacy, those active in voter registration agree, has made it much easier for registration activists to reach out to minorities, the poor and other groups that have traditionally been removed from the political process.

But some analysts suggest that Jackson, who was also a candidate in 1984, may be reaching the limits of his influence in mobilizing voters. Gans said voter turnout during this year’s primaries demonstrates Jackson’s apparent inability to “significantly expand the black electorate in the manner he did in 1984.”

James McCallie, a 41-year-old custodian in Chattanooga who was laid off a few years ago from an engineering plant, symbolizes the predicament of some disaffected blacks--stirred by the rise of Jackson but disillusioned over his treatment by the white Establishment.

For the first time since he can remember, McCallie registered a few months ago to vote. “It was just convenient,” he said. The registration workers “were right here at work, and I didn’t have to go anywhere.”

Jackson helped motivate him, he said. “I’m not really involved a whole lot in politics,” he said, “but I can look to him as a leader. It’s an inspiration--any black who gets a chance to advance in a field that hasn’t been open to blacks before, that opens doors.”

May Not Vote

But now, as McCallie looks at Jackson’s current role--beaten out as presidential nominee, shunned as running mate--he does not think he will bother to vote in November. “I don’t have (anybody) else I could relate to as well as I could him,” he said.

The Republican Party has no candidate equivalent to Jackson who can help draw new voters into the fold. But it is still managing to add at least some new names to the registration lists.

Narciso Alberti, a Cuban-born businessman in Baldwin Park in Los Angeles who has been in the United States for 17 years, points to civic duty--and the ease of registering by mail--as reasons for his registering to vote a few weeks ago.

“I never voted in my life so I want to do it now,” he said. “The difference is I finally feel like I belong to the United States, and it’s time to do something for this country.”

Voter registration activists in both parties realize they cannot rely solely on inspirational candidates such as Jackson to increase voting. Instead, they feel they must tackle the institutional obstacles that they say deter millions of poor, disadvantaged and immigrant Americans from voting.

Strong Local Authority

Local politicians have wide latitude to set whatever registration procedures they choose, as long as they are not discriminatory. Recent court decisions have upheld local authority, and federal legislation that would impose uniform procedures nationwide is stalled in Congress.

“Politicians don’t want new voters,” said Richard A. Cloward, co-author with his wife, Frances Fox Piven, of a new book, “Why Americans Don’t Vote.” “They just want the ones who elected them.”

In general, Cloward said, local registrars have made little effort to accommodate newcomers to this country who may not be adept enough in English to wade through registration procedures. “And that’s particularly true of California,” he said, “where Spanish-speaking voters are greatly underrepresented in the electorate.”

Piven and Cloward maintain that “the United States is the only Western democracy whose government does not actively encourage and automatically register its citizens to vote. . . . A complete inventory of obstructions (to registering voters) would fill a small book.”

Provides Name of Judge

Piven speaks from experience. Born in Canada, she was required by New York City voting registrars to provide the name of the judge who signed her naturalization papers. “Luckily, I remembered where the papers were,” she said, “and the judge’s name was legible.”

Others may not be so lucky. Piven and Cloward cite dozens of registration practices in municipalities and states nationwide that, they say, often prevent minorities and low-income people from voting.

West Virginia, they say, requires all voting registrants to appear personally before a notary public. In Massachusetts, Connecticut and elsewhere, according to Piven and Cloward, citizens must often travel long distances to the county seat to register.

But in many parts of the country, the biggest impediments to voting have nothing to do with procedures. “Right now there is a lot of apathy . . . ,” said Jackie Haines, executive director of the Los Angeles County Republican Party. “You can stand there all day at the supermarket and try to register people, but if they’re not interested, they’re not interested.”

Staff writers Don Shannon and Keith Love contributed to this story.