Myth and Reality

THE CONTRAST could hardly have been stfarper.

Washington D.C., Friday, September 30, 1983. More than 300 people crowded into the Department Hall for a black the dinner, part of a symposium sponsored by Harvard and the American Broadcasting Co, on how to increase voter registration. Even the television cameramen wore luzedos and white gloves for the gala, which drew many of the Capital's media and political chieftains. Before the dinner, waiters mingled among the crowd, offering peeled grapes coated with a nut cheese spread and small slices of quiche, During the meal, two men waited on each table to serve the five courses, and their accompanying wines.

At one head table sat former President Gerald E. Ford. At the other was former President Jimmy Carter. The two were slated to address the crowd on the problem which the two-day symposium was called to examine--the marked decline in voter participation, which dropped below 55 percent during the two men's 1976 duel.

As the audience finished their creme de cocoa in Florentine baskets, Ford criticized the length of the presidential primary season, which he said numbed the populace. Carter bemoaned the "hodgepodge of registration laws" which he said were "so confusing even to a college student, but particularly to an uneducated Black or Hispanic person [that] it is almost impossible to figure out how, in a convenient way, to become registered."

After two days of intense discussions, the blue ribbon panel of 40 professors, politicians, political activists, and journalists approved a resolution which called for examination of a series of reforms. They suggested moving voter registration, which in some states is as much as a month before the election, to election day, and keeping the polls open for 24 hours. And they encouraged networks to exercise voluntary restraint in using exit polling to project election winners on the argument that voters hearing an early projection would feet that their vote counted less, and would be less likely to use it. Participants were pleased with what they saw as progress on a pressing matter.

The Roxbury section of Boston, Wednesday, September 21, 1981. Nine days before the D.C. conference, just outside Dudley Station, a small card table was set up. It was late afternoon, the sky was overcast and a strong wind kept blowing the "Register to Vote" sign over the table. Nevertheless, a constant stream of people all Black crowded around to sign up. As the subways screeched on the tracks overhead. Russell Williams, a Boston coordinator of Operation Big Vote, briefly interrogated each person: "Have you ever registered before?" "Where do you live?" "Do you want to be registered as a Democrat, a Republican, or an Independent?"

Tables similar to Williams' were set up throughout the predominantly Black areas of Boston that afternoon. It was the last day to register for the October 11 mayoral primary, and volunteers were finishing up a drive that had been accelerating since early "August. Largely as a result of the Big Vote campaign, which targeted other minority area as well, the number of people who registered to vote in Boston jumped by 50,000 between January and September, according to city estimates. About 20,000 Blacks and Hispanics swelled the ranks of the largest boost in registered voters in Boston history.

The dramatic rise in interest from a traditionally politically dormant group has several sources. One is the increasing success of Black politicians across the country. Harold Washington's ascension to the Chicago mayoralty and Wilson Goode's primary victory in Philadelphia came after massive voter registration drives. Another reason is the increase in Black success locally--in 1981, the first Black person was elected to the Boston city council since 1968, and for the first time ever two Blacks made it to the school committee. This year, there is the credible mayoral candidacy of a Black, Melvin H. King. "I want to see my people in there," said Roxbury resident Keith Pard after registering to vote." "I always felt Boston was a racist city. "I'm sure King won't be racist," explained Charles Dromauer of Mattapan.

THE WASHINGTON, D.C. conference was trying to activate the large number of non-voting American adults, a larger proportion of the population than in almost any other Western democracy. Though sincere and diligent in their efforts, they failed. To be sure, there are structural reasons why millions of Americans opt not to help choose the leaders who will tax them, spend their money and draft their laws. Perhaps the checklist embraced by the symposium would boost participation by as much as 9 percent, as claimed. But the voters gained would be those with the incredibly short attention span, the citizens only marginally weakened from their coma of apathy.

The real roadblocks to voter registration have always been more serious, many affecting specifically minorities. Some of these are rapidly crumbling. The Dudley Station registration table could, for example, not have been set up in the 1979 mayoral election, because the city refused to certify several registration sites in the poorer areas of town. A suit by the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights was what changed that for good.

Boston activists have also succeeded in changing laws which, while not directly related to voter registration, discourage minorities from participating in the democratic process by reducing their clout. The city council this year will be elected by districts and not, as in previous years, at large. Similarly, in the Southwestern states. Hispanics have won scores of suits forcing changes in districts which had been gerrymandered to divide their strength. Simultaneously, Hispanic voter registration increased 44 percent from 1976 to 1980.

ALTHOUGH MANY more battles are yet to be won, the truth is that voter registration is easier in this country than ever before. The most blatant racist barriers fell two decades ago, when the poll tax was declared unconstitutional, and the Voting Rights Act was passed and has been vigorously enforced since.

And it is not entirely clear that, aside from applying the laws equally, registration should be made any easier. Good reasons still exist for many current regulations: When Carter at the conference proposed election-day registration, Susan Farmer, the Rhode Island Secretary of State, raised unanswerable concerns about the massive potential for voter fraud if groups were not allowed the time gap to challenge voter lists.

Garry R. Orren, professor of Public Policy at the Kennedy School, acted in a background paper prepared for the conference a that "reforms which shift the burden of registration from the citizen to the state represent a sharp departure from some core values of American political culture." He explains that "our voting system still rents on an ethic of voluntarism. We rely on self-motivated individuals to rouse themselves to vote." In general, it is not unreasonable to expect voters to show interest a month before election-day. Along the same lines, though conference participants argued that the vast number of Americans who move each year are unfairly disenfranchised, they failed to show why it is fairer to give power over local matters to someone who has just moved into a community and may not stay.

Carter noted that "of registered Blacks in this country, in the last presidential election, 84 percent voted. Of registered whites, in the last presidential election, 89 percent voted. But this is the disheartening thing: The latest statistics, from last year, show that only 64 percent of eligible Americans are registered to vote." He then went on to imply that if everyone were registered, then more than 80 percent would vote.

But that mere number manipulation glosses over the problem. Most people register because they want to vote: they don't register if they don't want to vote or if they are given no reason to. The symposium could have made a constructive suggestion--calling on the government to wage the legal battles and the voter registration drives which are currently operating almost completely on a volunteer basis. (Boston's Operation Big Vote has worked so far on a budget of less than $8,000.) Instead they fiddled with procedure. It is ironic that in two days of talks, in the tightly secured, red carpeted, chandeliered caucus room of the Russell Senate Office Building, no one so much as mentioned the quiet revolutions going on in places like Chicago or Boston.