Bob Barr

Voters Need Motivation, Not Phone Call

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

July 26, 2006

I know the "dog days of summer" aren't quite here yet, but the pitiful voter turnout in last week's primary elections seems to indicate Georgia voters are in a funk reminiscent of that traditional period when temperatures push our canine friends to lethargy or worse.

The percentage of Peach State voters who went to the polls barely cracked double digits for each of the two major parties.

The poor turnout, especially in primary elections, is neither unique to Georgia nor a recent phenomenon; but it seems especially problematic for us. Nationally, as reflected in a recent analysis of primary voting patterns, not a single state has witnessed even 40 percent of eligible voters go to the polls on primary election day. The rule has been somewhere between 20 percent and 30 percent, and this year Georgia was at the low end of that sorry statistic.

Fooling around with "advance voting," which allows voters to cast ballots several days before the actual primary, or changing the method of voting (Georgia has switched to whiz-bang electronic voting machine ballots), seem to have little impact on voter turnout. Over the past few decades, Georgia's political leaders have moved the date for primary voting from July to August and back again. This too, seems to have had little impact on turnout. So long as voters are forced to focus on voting in the middle of the summer vacation period, our state's figures are likely to remain distressingly low.

While there certainly is no guarantee that moving the primary to early September, as a number of other states have done, will significantly improve turnout in Georgia, the question really should be, since it can hardly get any worse, why not try it?

There's not a single analysis I've seen that concludes we are reaping a better quality of candidate, or seeing a more informed electorate, as a result of low voter turnout. In modern decades, the high-water mark for voter turnout for a presidential election was 1960, when more than 63 percent of the voting-age population voted.

While turnout in the 2004 presidential race just managed to crack the 60th percentile, this was the first time that hallmark had been reached since the 1960s. Whether this trend has produced a consistently higher quality of candidate or a more informed voter remains an open question.

Interestingly, throughout this period, the manner in which political information is presented to voters has changed dramatically, but obviously with no positive impact on voter turnout. When John F. Kennedy was elected president in 1960, Americans received much of their news from three network television stations that broadcast far less than 24 hours each day. Now, we have vastly more local news programs, and multiple 24/7 cable networks.

Yet, what good does all this coverage do us in terms of educating voters as to important issues when, on a perhaps typical day last week, at least one of the cable networks spent most of one afternoon showing us continuous live coverage of a white pickup truck driving around some state, attempting vainly to avoid being caught by the police?

Candidates seem to possess an irresistible urge to communicate with voters using high-tech methods, without apparent regard for whether the voters actually listen to or learn anything worthwhile from such communications. Repetitive telephone missives from "celebrities" to voters are becoming downright annoying.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former U.S. Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia lent their names and voices to automated phone solicitations in Ralph Reed's 12-point loss to Casey Cagle on July 18. Whether any of those voters did anything other than simply erase such canned messages from their voice mails is a question future candidates ought seriously to ask their campaign managers in future elections.

Then there's the question of the masses of negative campaign mail that clog voters' mailboxes, received in greater quantities in the just-concluded primary than I've ever before witnessed. Here again, I have yet to see a credible study concluding that such tactics and expenditures raises either the level of voter education or of voter turnout.

Maybe I'm overly pessimistic, but with the two major political parties in many states often pressuring potential primary candidates not to run, and, certainly in Georgia at least, seeming to favor holding primary elections on the date least likely to attract a higher turnout, I don't see much chance things will improve anytime soon. That's unfortunate, because we'll all continue to suffer a deficit of educated and informed voters and of candidates.

Mr. Barr occupies the 21st Century Liberties Chair for Freedom and Privacy at the American Conservative Union Foundation.