News Digest
• PAGE 2 __WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 80,1996
r low
Less than 55 percent
of Americans expected
to mark the “X* on the
ballot this year.
WASHINGTON (AP)—The elec
tion is almost upon the country and
about all that remains is to browbeat
the American people for the next six
days to shame them into voting.
' Won’t work. The experts say less
than 55 percent of eligible Americans
will participate, and they have some
theories on what that says about the
world’s most celebrated—and maybe
its most casual—democracy.
A century ago, 80 percent of Ameri
cans routinely voted. But in the last 30
years, turnout has gone down. From 64
percent in 1960, when John F. Kennedy
was elected, it slid to just barely above
50 percent in 1988 before squiggling
up to 55.2 percent four years ago.
But the ,1992 race had an incum
bent president on the ropes, an attrac
tive Challenger and a feisty third-party
- insurgent. This time around, none of
those elements apply and that has a lot
of people worried that the participants
will barely outnumber nonvoters.
If people in only nine states got to
elect the president next Tuesday, those
in the other 41 would be outraged.
But that’s what will happen, in ef
fect. The number who will vote is
roughly equal to all the voters in the
nine largest states, California, New
York, Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania,
Illinois, Ohio, Michigan and New Jer
sey.
“There seems little question that
turnout will be down, perhaps sharply,”
says Curtis Gans, who has been think
ing about voter turnout for 20 years.
He directs the nonpartisan Committee
for the Study of the American Elector
ate.
Things would even be worse if
Congress hadn’t enacted the motor
voter law, allowing people to register
where they apply for drivers licenses
and in other accessible places. That law
registered between six million and nine
million new voters this year.
Still, Gans predicts that turnout on
Tuesday will range between the 50.1
percent participation in 1988 —t the
record low in modem times - and the
55.2 percent rate in 1992.
Compare that to a century ago. In
1896, when Democrat William
Jennings Bryan ran against Republican
William McKinley, 79percent turned
out—including an astonishing 96 per
cent in Iowa and Illinois.
In those days, the parties differed
sharply; now they often gloss over dif
ferences. Believing their well-being
was at stake, whole classes of people
associated with a party.
“Parties don't do mobilizing any
more,” says Walter Dean Burnham,
voting expert at the University of
Texas. “The Republicans don’t mobi
lize the lower orders,” he said, and the
party that traditionally played that role,
the Democrats, “became yuppiefied,
gone upscale.”
What worries Gans most is the ten
dency of young people to shun voting.
Only 12 percent of those 18 to 20 voted
in 1994, he says, and a majority of their
parents don’t vote either.
Voting matters, Gans says, because
it is about the least one can do to par
ticipate in democracy. People who
don’t vote, he says, generally don’t vol
unteer, don’t write letters to the editor,
don’t,organize — and that’s not good
for a society that depends on citizen
action.
This week, all the candidates are
appealing to voters to vote. Churches,
editorials, civic groups beat the same
drum.
Historically, the problem hasn’t
been getting registered people to the
polls, but getting people to register.
In an Associated Press poll, 83 per
cent of registered voters said they were
“absolutely certain” to vote.
On a purely mathematical basis, it
is hard to make the case for voting,
notes Patrick Stroh, an analyst with a
political consulting firm in Pittsburgh.
One vote in millions is rarely pivotal.
And studies show that nonvoters,
if they did participate, would break
about the same way as the voters.
“It is unclear that if we had a 98
percent turnout it would revolutionize
anything,” Stroh said. But another ob
server, Jane Mansbridge of Harvard,
says people who don’t vote pay; they
don’t get as good representation.
Analyst says younger people
less concerned about voting
From The Associated Press
Tucked between music videos
and episodes of Beavis and
Butthead on MTV, young voters are
being told about this year’s presi
dential election.
But are they listening?
Regardless of how the message
is packaged, Melanie Weatherly
says she won’t be altering a voting
booth next week.
“A lot of the candidates are old,
pompous white males who give a
lot of lip service,” Weatherly said.
“I don’t feel like they represent
America.
The 24-year-old psychology stu
dent has voted once since 1989,
when siie became eligible to vote.
She represents many young voters
nationwide who plan to stay away
from the polls next Ihesday.
Curtis Gans, a Washington,
D.C., political analyst who has stud
ied voting patterns for 20 years, said
apathy isn’t the cause of the voting
resistance.
“What makes them vote is a
sense of hope in the future, a sense
of mission in the election, a sense
of idealism in the election,” Gans
said. “That’s not very evidentin this
election.”
Most young voters won’t fell for
gimmicks intended to get them to
vote, said Gans, director of the
Committee for the Study of the
American Electorate.
“People don’t vote because rock
stars tell them to vote,” Gans said,
referring to MTV’s “Choose or
Lose”campaign that uses celebrities
to encourage young Americans to
take advantage of their right to vote.
Most people will not vote until
they think they have a greater stake
in the process, Gans said. When
people marry, have children and
begin paying property taxes, they
usually pay more attention to elec
tions, he said.
“We know that it isn’t simply a
Generation X’ phenomenon,” said
John Hibbing, a professor of politi
cal science at the University of Ne
braska-Lincoln. “Young people
have never voted much.”
Erica Rea, a senior at Lincoln
Northeast High School, said she
plans to vote next Tuesday for the
first time. She said she doesn’t iden
tify strongly with either major party
presidential candidate, but doesn’t
want to miss her first vote.
Clinton confident as
s?
|
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) —
Showing a front-runner’s cockiness
as Election Day nears, President
Clinton brushed off noisy hecklers
from Bob Dole’s camp Tuesday by
declaring, “I’ll bet you they won’t
be doing that a week from now.”
Ending a seven-state tour before
beginning a nonstop dash to Nov.
5, Ginton campaigned in Ohio and
Pennsylvania in an effort to pad his
commanding lead in national polls
and help in the Democrats’ struggle
to reclaim control of Congress.
“Will you be there next week?”
he shouted to thousands of support
ers on a sunny fall day on Hill Field
‘ at the Univarsity of Pennsylvania.
“God bless you, we can do it!”
In Columbus, a dozen or more
protesters shouted persistently from
choice seats above the stage in Ohio
State University’s basketball arena.
• They waved signs, chanted “Dole
Kemp” and shouted, “Stop lying to
' . _ y:
the American public.”
The president tried to hush them,
tried to ignore them and finally
lashed back by attacking spending
reductions proposed in Republican
budgets that he vetoed.
“I would be screaming too if I
were in a country that took Head
Start and Big Bird away from 5
year-olds, school lunches away
from 10-year-olds, summer jobs
away from 15-year-olds and college
loans away from 20-year-olds. I
might be screaming too.”
The crowd roared approval.
“We got some juice in the audi
ence,” Clinton said afterward. ‘That
was great.”
Indeed, there is a buoyant, con
fident mood among the president's
people as the race moves toward the
finish line. Campaign crowds are
large and enthusiastic. Despite long
days on the road, Clinton's aides are
relaxed.
Dole remains optimistic
IRVINE, Galif. (AP)^ Bob Dole
ended a four-day California swing and
headed East on Tuesday after a blis
tering attack on President Clinton’s
foreign Mid economic policies.
“The Clinton administration is
more like a wrecking crew than a
bridge builder,” Dole told a breakfast
gathering in Orange County, normally
one of the most Republican areas in
the nation.
He asserted that a win in Califor
nia would make capturing the presi
dency a “piece of cake” and said he’d
be back this weekend pursuing that
goal.
Combing the country for a come
back in the meantime, Dole’s strategists
were setting his schedule day by day,
even hour by hour, as the campaign
entered its final week. It was not an
easy task for Dole, trailing by 15 to 20
percentage points in most national
polls.
“Maybe they’re accurate, maybe
thley’re not,” Dole said. “Our own polls
show there’s a lot happening out there.
A lot of undecideds.... People are still
making up their minds.”
Dole renewed his assertion he
would wrest California — and its 54
electoral votes—from Clinton, start
ing with a big win in Orange County, a
GOP bastion.
“We are fighting for California, for
every vote, up and down, all over this
place,” he said. “Coining back on Sat
urday or Sunday. We understand the
importance of this state.”
A poll in Tuesday’s Los Angeles
Times found Clinton leading Dole 51
percent to 34 percent in California,
with 12 percent for Ross Perot.
Furthermore, an Oct. 19-21 survey
released over the weekend by the same
newspaper found Dole carrying Or
ange County by between 19,000 and
25,000 voters — far below the,
300,000-vote margin typically needed
to offset the heavily Democratic bal
loting in San Francisco and Los Ange
les.
Correction
The Daily Nebraskan listed the wrong
date for completion of the parking
structure near Memorial Stadium. It
will be finished in August 1997.
Clarification
Husker fans whocannot find a retailer
sponsoring the Windsor Canadian con
i test described in Friday’s Daily Ne
* braskan can write for an application
and rules to “Windsor Greatest Sports
Fan Contest,” c/o Shandwick USA,
8400 Normandale Lake Blvd. Suite
500, Minneapolis, Minn., 55437.
Yeltsin may have surgery next week
Doctor says president’s conditions improving, prognosis kxks good
MOSCOW (AP)—Boris Yeltsin’s
condition is improving, and the Rus
sian president could undergo heart sur
gery as early as next week, an Ameri
can surgeon consulting on the case said
Tuesday.
Dr. Michael DeBakey told The
Associated Press that he would travel
to Russia this weekend to consult with
Yeltsin’s doctors. No date has been set,
but “we hope to go ahead with it next
week,” DeBakey said from Houston.
He saH^yeltsm’s condition has been
improving, and that doctors had made
progress in treating Yeltsin’s severe
anemia and thyroid dysfunction. Those
problems, he said, appear to have been
“pretty well corrected.”
DeBakey said Yeltsin needed a
triple or quadruple coronary artery
bypass, although he would not know
specifically what the Russian doctors
plan to do until he arrives in Moscow.
The date of the operation has been
a moving target, with Yeltsin at first
sayinghe expected surgery in Septem
ber. 'Hie Kremlin later said it would
take place sometime between mid-No
vember and mid-December.
DeBakeyhas said several times that
the prognosis for the 65-year-old Rus
sian leader is good.
There was no comment from the
Kremlin about DeBakey’s assessment.
Kremlin doctors said earlier Tuesday
.that the “final stage of preparations”
, for surgery had begun. Their statement,
carried by Russian hews agencies, said
Yeltsin’s condition was satisfactory. It
did not mention a date for the opera
tion.
The Kremlin, which has been less
than forthcoming about Yeltsin’s
health, chose instead to emphasize the
fact that the president spoke on the
phone with his chief of staff.
It wasn’t much to work with, but
the president’s men were relentless in
their campaign to burnish Yeltsin’s
image as a can-do kind of guy despite
his illness.
‘He has his own vision of the prob
lem, his own understanding of his
body,” Dr. Sergei Mironov said. “So if
we change his treatment in any way, or
use a new medicine, we first have to
convince him that it’s necessary.”
Yeltsin scrapped all meetings this
week to undergo medical tests, but his
staff Tuesday made it sound as if he
were working nonstop.
He gets “reports every day and
works on documents from 11/2 to two
hours,” Mironov said in die interview.
Nebraskan
Assoc. News
Edttors: Paula Lavigne
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Editors: Bryce Glenn
Jennifer Milke
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Manager: AmyStmthers
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ALL MATERIAL COPYRIGHT 1996
DAILY NEBRASKAN
When putting out a
campfire, drown the fire,
stir it, and drown it again.
