Absentee Ballot Voting

October 19, 2004

Unedited transcript prepared from a tape recording

1:45 p.m.	Registration
2:00	Panelists:	Curtis Gans, Committee for the Study of the American Electorate
		Rebecca Vigil-Giron, National Association of Secretaries of State
	Moderator:	John C. Fortier, AEI
3:30	Adjournment

Proceedings:
MR. FORTIER:  I'm John Fortier, and welcome to our Election Day presentation.  Of course, this is Election Day for many people in the United States who are voting before November 2nd, and that is the subject of our discussion today--the rise of absentee and other forms of voting that occur before Election Day and often away from the polling place.

Let me set a little of the stage before turning it over to a discussion among the panelists and doing some introductions.  There is a growing trend in America towards greater voting away from the polling place and greater voting at an earlier stage.  Absentee voting goes back a long way in our country.  We first began absentee voting in the Civil War.  It was a provision put in place for military voters who were going to be away from home, a significant force in the 1864 election, but that was a, more or less, one-time event.  It was put away in the closet for a number of years, and then we instituted some other important reforms in our election administration, the main one being the secret ballot or the Australian ballot, which in the late 19th century was instituted across many states, giving you much of what we think of at the polling place today--a curtain behind you for privacy, a ballot printed by the state and a number of other things that were designed to prevent some of the abuses that had gone on in the late 19th century.

And then, beginning in the 20th century, as we began to be a much more mobile country, with railroad workers, with people moving from state to state in a way that they hadn't before, we began to realize that people were not always going to be where they resided on Election Day and that to allow them to vote, we would have to have some form of voting away from the polls, voting by absentee, and this took many forms, but has come to us today as a number of different methods, but ones you're familiar with, receiving a ballot by mail and other ones, which are somewhat more recent, going into a polling place earlier than the set Election Day to cast your vote.

The great argument for absentee voting is that it is easier for people to vote; that people like the option of being able to vote in a way that's not just one day and set hours, that there's more flexibility, that there are some cost advantages for the people who administer elections, and in some states has shown a great popularity for it, that once introduced, there's a constituency for continuing it.

When we speak of voting before Election Day, we really speak of a number of different procedures.  One is voting by mail, a procedure done primarily in Oregon, which votes 100 percent by mail.  There is no real polling place, as we know it.  Voters are mailed their ballots.  They are then able to fill them out and mail them back in.  Most common I think to those of you out there is absentee voting, which means you request a ballot by mail.  You send it back, and this is a procedure that is available to us in all of the states and overseas, but varies widely from state to state as to how much it is utilized.  States like Washington State have over 60 percent of the people voting this way.  Some of the Eastern, Midwestern and Southern states still have quite low rates of voting this way--sometimes below 5 percent.

And then one other category I can put out there is what we call early voting, and this is voting before Election Day, but not voting by the mail, but going into a polling place, sometimes at your county seat, maybe not as many options to go--places to go--as you would on Election Day, a number of polling places out there of a central location, and sometimes that's considered part of the absentee vote.  People who are going to be away know that, and instead of asking for a mailed ballot, they will go to that location.  You see today in Florida or yesterday in Florida the vote beginning in this way.  A number of states like Texas and Tennessee have very, very high rates of people voting early, and some states encourage that as well.

There are some arguments against, and we're going to hear some back and forth on that and some discussion on the panel, just briefly, especially those methods of voting where you are not in a polling place, when you have a mailed ballot, questions of the integrity of the ballot and potential fraud.  Who is it who's filling out this ballot and sending it in, the possibility of some sort of coercion.  If you are under the influence of your union workplace, church, spouse, and you have a ballot that comes to you, a piece of paper, no great protection, and you're a person who has authority or some sort of influence over you says, "Hey, let me see that ballot" or "Why don't we fill these out together" or more egregious forms of coercion, such as I'll give you $50 or promise you something or some sort of punishment if you don't fill it out the way I want, those are extreme examples, but cases where because you don't have privacy, because you don't have a curtain behind you, you can't simply thumb your nose at those pressures that your ballot is out there for those to see.

And then, finally, I think an argument that is also a very serious argument is that we maybe have moved away from a single day of voting, which is a civic day of responsibility for citizens, that as we make voting more of an experience that can go on for the weeks or even a month more than before Election Day, it becomes less important or less special to voters.  There's of a sense of America coming together on one day to select a president or to select people in other offices.

So how do we weigh some of these factors?  I'll let the panelists begin with that, and I'll weigh in later, but let me just bring us up to the present here.  We are in a very close election, one with great interest.  A 50-50 election I think is a pretty apt way of explaining where we are.  We have seen some phases of public opinion in a campaign, but really an underlying closeness that we saw in the 2000 election, that we see in Congress, in both houses, at the state level, in the state legislatures or the governorship, and with the ability, with the movement in many states to make absentee or early voting more available to people, the parties themselves and the candidates are trying to take advantage of that, and we won't know until after the election the extent that this is going on, but we see some evidence, such as President Bush recently sending out a taped phone message to people, he was in Wisconsin, to get out their vote now.  Don't risk the fact that you might be away or forget to vote or not be able to vote because of illness.  Get to the polls now.

John Kerry today or today's paper saying to people in Florida, his supporters, vote now, and I don't have my quote in front of me, but a quote from a Florida Republican Party official saying parties who don't play this game are destined to lose, that parties that have to use the rules that are available to them in the states to get their core voters out there, to ensure that they are there for the candidate to turn out the base.

So we have a very interesting election ahead of us, and one of the ways that the parties are trying to motivate their voters is to use these methods not on Election Day at a polling place, but other methods of voting.

To discuss these issues today, we have a world-class panel--two panelists who are well-known in this field and have some disagreements, which I think is a good thing.  We'll have some back and forth.

First, let me introduce New Mexico Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron, who is elected to a third term as Secretary of State of New Mexico.  She's the highest-ranking elected Hispanic woman state official in the United States, and she serves on the Executive Board and president of the National Association of Secretary of State, and we also have the executive director of that organization here in the audience.

She's also served as a consult for IFES, the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, in monitoring elections in various countries around the world, and she is in charge of voting in a state that has a significant proportion of voting that goes on not on Election Day, but in these areas of early and absentee voting.

I'll turn to Rebecca first, but let me introduce Curtis, also, and we'll turn to them in turn.  Curtis Gans is the director of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate.  He has been in that position for 28 years.  He is probably the country's leading expert on voter turnout and participation.  When the election is over, people turn to Curtis Gans for his numbers and, actually, interestingly, talking to him beforehand for his predictions as to turnout, which he can tell you, but looks like we have a very well-contested election, which may drive up turnout this time.  So we'll see what the final numbers are, but he will be the source that we will all turn to.  His writings have appeared in all sorts of places, including Atlantic Monthly, New York Times Book Review, and appears regularly on various media and television programs.

So, first, let me start with Rebecca, and then we'll turn to Curtis.

MS. VIGIL-GIRON:  Thank you very much, John.  Thank you for having me today.

I'd like to start off, and I'm probably going to be repeating a few things that John mentioned to you, but 31 states allow early or no excuse absentee voting, which means any registered voter may cast a ballot before Election Day without providing justification.

Close to 30 states allow voters to cast early ballots in person.  Twenty-one states offer early voting by mail.  Early voting started yesterday, as was mentioned, in Florida.  Also, this week, Arkansas, Colorado and Texas began early voting.  Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, Tennessee and Wisconsin are among the other states that have started early voting.  Some states expanded the practice, after the 2000 election.  Georgia's Secretary of State, for example, fought very hard to implement in-person early voting in that state.

In Michigan, the Secretary of State is lobbying the state legislature to pass a law which would allow early voting.  Proponents of early voting say it gives voters a chance to avoid waiting in line on Election Day.  It can also allow them to resolve any last-minute voter registration problems and still be able to vote a standard ballot.

Some opponents, as was mentioned, of early voting by mail say there's an increased risk of fraud.  States have protections in place which are designed to prevent fraud.  For example, states can verify the signature on the ballot by checking it against the signature on the voter registration card.

As is usually the case, there are two different sides to the early voting story.  On one side, you have members of the baby boom generation, which I am one of, by the way, and older citizens who say they enjoy the feeling of community they get when they visit the polls with their neighbors on Election Day.

On the other side, you have younger Americans, younger parents, who are juggling packed schedules and say early voting is a welcome convenience.  Whatever side you're on, it looks like early voting is here to stay.

Voters across the country are flocking to the polls early in what some states say are record numbers.  In Blount County, Tennessee, elections officials expect that 20,000 of the county's 72,000 registered voters will vote early.  In Nueces County, Texas, more than 3,000 early votes were cast yesterday.  In the year 2000, in New Mexico, 33 percent of those votes cast were cast early and absentee.  I think that this year, in New Mexico, more than up to and more than 50 percent of the voters casting their ballots in New Mexico will be early and absentee.

Thank you.

MR. GANS:  Thank you all for coming.  Thank you for inviting me.  I'm the curmudgeon here.

What I have to say about these procedures probably should be preceded by my experience in Marine Corps boot camp.  My senior drill instructor--this was while there was still a boot camp in San Diego because nothing could have gotten me to Parris Island--used to say whenever we were flustered, do something, even if it's wrong.

The impetus for new-excuse absentee, early voting and mail voting essentially comes from election officials like Rebecca wanting to do something about the turnout problem, but as it turns out, what they've done is wrong.  I'm talking now about three phenomenon.  One is the change from giving a reason to vote absentee, to having to give no reason for absentee voting, and voting along a  period that is up to 40 days; early voting, which to me means setting up satellite voting places in places of convenience--shopping centers, malls, et cetera--that permit people to vote in advance; and then Oregon's all mail voting.  What's wrong with this?

Well, the first thing is it hurts turnout.  We have been studying this since 1992 in both presidential and midterm elections.  What we have done is essentially aggregate the states that have no-excuse absentee against all other states in terms of their turnout performance.  And in every year since 1992 or since the beginning of the study, the states with no-excuse absentee have performed worse than the states without it.  By worse, I mean that in years of increase, like between 1988 and 1992, turnout increases in these states were lesser, and in years of decrease, between 1992 and '96, turnout decreases were greater every year.

With early voting, you have the same picture with the exception of one year, which is 2002.  Every other year, increases lesser, decreases greater.  In 2002, that wasn't true.  The states with early voting had greater increases than the states without.  But the preponderance of the evidence is clear, that if you look at voting as a function of citizen voting age population, if you don't play games with the registration figures, turnout is lower, turnout performance is lower in every state.

I want to say a little bit about why you don't use registration figures.  Registration figures do not capture the whole electorate.  It only captures those who are registered.  Registration figures are notoriously inaccurate, containing people who have died or moved.  For instance, Alaska just reported its registration figures for 2004, and it showed a substantial decrease in registration all the way from 130 percent of the voting age population down to 110 percent.  Voting age registration figures also get altered by changes in law.  The electorate, after the motor voter law, is very different in terms of registration than prior to it.

And, finally, election figures can juggle this.  If they conduct purges very close to the election, then the turnout, as a percent of registered, increases.  If they conduct purges way far from the election, the turnout of registered decreases.  So, for instance, Oregon, ever since they've done mail voting, have been conducting their purges close to the election to show a higher-than-previous turnout of registered.

But the actual performance of mail voting in Oregon is this:  In the first election after the first special election, for which there is no good comparative data, in the 2000 presidential and statewide primary, Oregon's turnout was the lowest in state history.

In the 2000 general election, Oregon's turnout increased by 2.8 percentage points, which was greater than the national average, but lesser than the battleground states, of which it was one, and there were 18 states which had greater turnout increases than Oregon without resorting to mail voting.

In the 2002 statewide primary, they had the second-lowest turnout in history.  In the 2002 general election, they had the third lowest in history.  This year's primary turnout under mail voting was the lowest in the state's history.  In every case, voting prior to the election essentially hurts turnout.  But it also carries with it other risks.

One of my favorite examples comes from 1992.  Ten days before the election, Ross Perot got on "60 Minutes" and accused the Bush White House of sabotaging his daughter's wedding.  It didn't say much about the Bush White House, but said I think something about Perot's level of paranoia.  If you can, as you can now, vote 40 days before the election, there were 30 days in which people voted and didn't have that information.  Four days before that election, former Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger got indicted under a bill of particulars that essentially said George Bush lied about Iran Contra.  Anybody who voted in the 36 days before that, didn't have that information.

I think there were probably a million to a million and a half people who voted before the first debate.  I think the first debate changed somewhat the character of this election.  Suppose three days before this election there would be a terrorist act or we would capture Osama bin Laden or there would be a stock market crash, there would probably be 25 million who will have cast their ballot and not have that information.  We should all have the same information.

Secondly, there are three--this is not true of early voting, but it is true of no-excuse absentee--there are three potential sources of distortion.  Seven states do not have the safeguards that New Mexico has.  People's ballots may be collected by other people and turned in.  We have had the example this year of the Sproul Company being hired by the Republican Party in Oregon and Nevada, picking up registrations and not delivering the Democratic registrations.  The same thing can happen when partisans pick up votes in these seven states.

We have the existing example in Chicago of an election tossed out because people were given monetary incentives to vote a certain way.  We have what John said, which is true, that it's an invitation to essentially the pressured vote, being invited to your NARAL Chapter or your NRA Chapter meeting for a ballot filling-out party, pressures that you could resist behind a curtain that you can't resist amongst your peers.  In any event, what these remote things, other than early voting do, is undermine the secret ballot.

Finally, I think you're in a situation where you are sacrificing something important.  What is important is that we probably have, in our disparate country, two communal acts left--4th of July for the celebration of fireworks and voting at your polls with your peers.  When you start diffusing that, you'll continue the process of diffusing community.  When you take the X million dollars that you have to get people to the polls on Election Day and you diffuse it over 10, 20, 30, 40 days, you undermine the incentive to vote.

For all of those reasons, I think the prior election voting, except for those people who need to, who are going to be out of town on business, who are physically handicapped, ought to be rolled back.  It's popular.  It probably won't happen.

One last point, in the hope of increasing turnout, we've hurt turnout, but that's partly because the problem of turnout right now is not a problem of procedure.  We have, for 30 years, made our registration and voting procedures easier and voter turnout, except for the elderly and except for the new South, has declined substantially.  We need to address, and I will get into it during the discussion, the motivation of voters because that's where the problem lies.

MS. VIGIL-GIRON:  John, thank you.  I wish you would have had Curtis speak before I did, you know?  I have a whole lot of points here to make as well.

In regards to whether elections officials made a blunder in allowing or supporting choices for voting, the number of days, early, absentee or whatever, did have something to do with turnout, but it had more so to do with choice with unexcused absences as well.  And so providing choices for millions of people out there living in very rural communities, and I'll use New Mexico as an example.  New Mexico, of course, is a very rural state.  We're the fifth-largest state geographically, 19 Indian pueblos, within the State of New Mexico, part of the Navajo Nation.  A large majority of the Navajo Nation lives in New Mexico in very, very rural conditions.

And so, consequently, for them, it's very difficult for them to travel more than 80 miles, 100 miles, to a polling place that, in the past, has been challenged by the Justice Department, and so, consequently, there are states like New Mexico, who have consent decrees and have been under consent decrees because elections officials have not provided polling places that would be easily accessible to our Native American communities, as well as our 42-percent Hispanic community within the State of New Mexico.  And so choice is the number one issue, I think, for us, as elections officials, to provide absentee and early voting for our states.

As far as performance is concerned in the State of New Mexico, I mentioned the 33 percent of those individuals that chose to cast their ballot--early or absentee--we actually celebrated a 62-percent turnout in the 2000 presidential election, which was high for New Mexico.  On an average, it was higher than the average.

And another thing is the fact that the Help America Vote Act was signed into law and passed in 2002, October, and of course has many different provisions that would assist in the process of handling voter registrations, central voter data systems that are being built right now.   Only nine states, of course, since the passage of the Help America Vote Act, and New Mexico being one of those states that has the central voter data system in place, where we can actually identify deceased voters and remove them immediately, working with our vital statistics departments out there in New Mexico, as well as removing and identifying felons through the federal justice system and removing those names immediately, these are real-time on-line systems that have been identified and defined in the Help America Vote Act.

And so that's going to play, for the future, that's going to be very, very important for those states that will have that type of a system in the place by the year 2006, and then of course leading up to the next 2008 presidential election.

In regards to the Motor Voter Law, which was passed in 1995, we don't actually do purges from our voter files, unless they are deceased voters.  But what we do do is we work along with the U.S. Postal Offices in making sure that we identify address changes for individuals that are on our voter roles within the state and making sure that they're still living with they're living by communicating with them.

And so if they do not return the postcards established, then what we do is we place them in an inactive status.  They still appear on the rosters when they go and present themselves, should they be excited about like this year, this upcoming presidential election, they'll be listed as inactive, but will be reactivated and be allowed to vote on Election Day, should they choose, or at the alternate early voting sites or the absentee process of the application process and receiving their application, and then they will be reactivated.

In regards to safeguards, the safeguards that the State of New Mexico has in place are model--I have to agree with you, Curtis--we've got some excellent model election laws in the State of New Mexico, and we're helping other states and we're sharing with one another, with our National Association of Secretaries of State, in regards to making sure that, and the whole impetus of the Help America Vote Act, by the way--and I was on the front end of that in the year 2000 and coming into 2001, sitting down with our Election Task Force Committee, with election directors and secretaries, as chief elections officials, making our recommendations to Congress before Congress even thought about going and addressing this issue.

We made our recommendations and asked them to address the issues of uniformity--uniform voter data systems, making sure everyone has one in place, making sure that no one is turned away at the polls and providing them with a provisional ballot and making sure that everyone recognizes their right to vote.

You know, I'm all about community, but being a community is not just about voting on one day.  Being a community is making sure that you participate in all of the activities leading up to maybe a legislative session or maybe leading up to a city council meeting or a county commission meeting, and being informed, in regards to what are the issues that are going to be coming up, utilizing your tax dollars and coming back to those different entities, those different bodies and making sure that that money comes back into your community.  I mean, that's what community is truly about.

I love seeing my poll workers on Election Day, and I've never voted absentee or even early.  I loved going to my polling place and greeting my--the average age of my poll worker is 70 years old, and I love them, and it's great.  And I see all of these young faces in the group here, and I'm saying, please, work alongside with them so that, when they're ready to pass the baton, that you're there, and you're ready, and you're educated on the processes of voting.

In fact, my poll worker presiding judge came up to me during the primary.  She was very worried because she said that they were going to be removed as poll workers because they were talking about how old they were, and I told them nobody is going to remove you because you are the ones that step up to the table and say, "I'm going to be vote.  I want to be there.  I want to do this."  Every election cycle, and you're the volunteers, you're paid for 14-hour days.  They're paid a little over $7 an hour in my state.

And I said, "Nobody is ever going to remove you, but don't you want to have someone there to pass the baton to and take over when you're ready to go?"  And she said, "No, I'm going to die here."  And I really think she was serious about that.

As far as the accessibility of absentee ballots, and I've got a situation of one particular case in New Mexico where there was a couple that was on a sailboat somewhere out in the Bahamas or something that communicated with my office, through the e-mail, and wanted to know what's the procedures on how to vote.  I can't get an answer from anyone out there.  And so we assisted them in e-mailing, electronically sending them, a ballot on their sailboat, and so we were able to take care of that type of a situation.  They were not sick.  They weren't infirmed or anything like that, but they saw an opportunity.  They're excited.  This is a very controversial election this year, not only the presidential, but other races as well.

And the big thing that I want to talk about here that is also going to be assisting with the process of voting is voter education.  For the very first time in my history with New Mexico, as the state elections official, my third term now, is now it is a funded mandate.

I have now spent almost $4 million in the State of New Mexico that was appropriated and authorized by the Federal Government and the president in providing voter education outreach.  And so we're doing it in English, and Spanish and Navajo.  And we're talking about what is a provisional ballot?  Who has to present voter identification?  Who doesn't have to present voter identification?  What kind of voting is there?  Where are the alternate voting sites in our state?  And I cannot tell you how excited people walking up to me everywhere.  Now, they know how their elections official is and what we do in our states because of what happened in the 2000 election.

And so, with that, I'll turn it back over to Curtis.  John?

MR. FORTIER:  Sure.  Let me follow up here.  Curtis and I are more or less on the same side of this issue, so we don't want to gang up on you here, but let me say a few things about turnout.  Curtis, of course, is the world's expert on this, but there is some academic research as to, especially Oregon, voting by mail, which relatively recently has been 100-percent voting by mail and its effects on turnout and some earlier studies on some smaller initiatives in other states.

On smaller elections, on local elections, where there is very low turnout--your dog catcher election, your library trustee election--where there is not a big person on the ballot, there is evidence that there are some significant increases in turnout because of mail voting.  People who would be reliable voters, responsible, go to the polls, would sit at their kitchen table and fill out their ballot for dog catcher, but might not go down to the polls for a local election.

That number goes down pretty significantly when you're talking about a statewide or presidential race, where there is some evidence, at least in some of these studies, that there is a small--4 or 5 percent--effect on voter turnout, but it has some caveats associated with it.

[Technical interruption.]

MR. FORTIER:  The question is, is that because it's a new phenomenon.  Often we have a well-publicized or new method of voting, where states put effort into it.  Oregon certainly is on the forefront of this movement.  They proselytize, they encourage people to adopt this sort of voting.  Is it because of that or is it because there's some fundamental shift in the way people vote because of that--again, small.

There's also the question of who, if there are people coming to vote, extra people, who are they, and they don't tend to be new voters, people who don't vote at all.  They tend to be we're retaining a little better people who might vote anyway, the slighter, greater percentage of people who would be responsible voters or regular voters might turn out at a slightly higher percentage because of these.

So I think the best-case scenario for the turnout is that there might be a small increase.  Curtis is probably going to dispute that.

MR. GANS:  I will strongly dispute that.  I don't dispute it on the dog catcher elections, but the figures are here.  In terms of Oregon's figures, I read them off.  They are based on citizen voting age population.  I can't think of a polling study that can be more valid than the aggregate data of voting, and that's true of early voting and no excuse absentee.

The one thing that you talked about that was so irrelevant to this debate on no excuse absentee and early voting, you talked about things that mostly I agree with--the business about the Pueblos and long distances to vote.  And the choice is clear.

You can do this remote voting and hurt turnout and hurt with differentials of information or you can put more polling places in.  It's more costly, you know, but that would solve the distance problem, and it would also solve the problem of trying to rekindle Election Day as the central day for your community participation otherwise we are still with the same problem which is--and I was for the Help America Vote Act.  I don't think it has gone far enough.  I was instrumental in the Motor Voter Act, but the problem isn't procedure in this country.  It's motivation.

You can provide the water, and we have the horse, but unless the horse wants to drink all our easier procedures in the world won't make it happen.  It will happen this election.  George Bush has provided on both sides all the motivation that people need.  We are going to have a substantial increase in turnout.  And one of the things we're going to find is that we don't have enough polling places.

The only election that is going to come close to this year's turnout is the '92 election, and there were people who stood for two hours in the rain in Georgia on line in order to vote.  We're going to have precisely the same type of motivation and precisely the same type of lines in this election.

MR. FORTIER:  Let me just put the question to you, Rebecca, taking up Curtis' comments.  Are the same people voting early and by absentee that would have been going to the polling places, if you had had less access to these?  Are these the same people?  What's your sense or your evidence for the fact that there might be or might not be new people?

MS. VIGIL-GIRON:  Of course, in New Mexico, we are going to probably experience more new voters voting early and absentee than the traditional voters that are going to vote on Election Day.  They are always going to vote on Election Day.  They are people like me that want to go.  That doesn't give me a sense of community, by the way, just going to my polling place on Election Day.  It just means that I'm going to vote on Election Day.  This is the last day.  This is the day, the day that I can vote, and I exercise my right to vote on that day, and it gives me a good feeling inside.

And as far as providing more polling places, sure, that would be great.  But in regards to treating one group differently than another group, I can't do that in my state.  I don't think any state can treat one group differently just because of distance.  And so, consequently, because we cannot treat voters differently in one location than another location, then we have to provide it for everyone equally across the board and uniformly.

Long lines are always going to be a problem if you have just one day of voting.  In New Mexico, we've got 1.8 million people, populationwise, and 1.3- that are over the age of 18.  Right now, in New Mexico, we have close to 1.1. million registered voters, and we are celebrating that because of this very, very important election, and we are a battleground state, and albeit, you know, the young voters' project came in, and they registered voters, and colleges, and universities, and other 501(c)(3)s came into our state and descended upon us, and they've registered close to almost 160,000 new voter registrants in the state.

And I would have to say that 80 percent or better of those new voter registrants are going to go to the polls, whether that's on Election Day, early or absentee, but the fact remains is that I'm letting people know that there are choices out there when they can exercise their right to vote, how to fill out their ballots--or not how to fill them out--how to fill out the necessary envelopes for their ballots, and of course for provisional voting, et cetera.

MR. FORTIER:  Curtis?

MR. GANS:  Two parts.  The first is on the polling places.  We should have a law mandating that no citizen be more than a certain distance from a polling place.  We should be able to create, and provide the resources to do that because I think the distance problem is real, and we should have that law.

The second thing to be said is that it is very clear that no excuse absentee, as opposed to early voting, the only people who avail themselves of no excuse absentee are people who would have gone to the polls anyway because they have to go through the process, except in the State of Washington, of requesting an absentee ballot.

So, essentially, what happens is this is a provision for lazy, middle- and upper-middle-class and upper-class people who would have voted anyway, and some of them forget to vote, and that's one of the reasons why this hurts turnout.

That isn't true of early voting.  Early voting can catch some people who didn't vote.  Whether it's worth all of the other problems, which is hurting turnout, at least in most elections, differentials of information, so that lots of people vote before they know certain things and undermining the communal act of voting, it's--

[Technical interruption.]

MS. VIGIL-GIRON:  --but I think, when you have something that gives choice, but doesn't produce results, when you have certain downside risks to it, I think you have to consider whether this trip was worth taking and whether we are wisely adjusting our laws for convenience at the risk of hurting the political system.

MR. FORTIER:  Let me just pose the question to Rebecca, one more that's been brought up, the question of coercion or pressured voting.  Again, looking at the history of absentee voting, when it was introduced early in the century, people viewed it as a reform, but they also remembered this other reform that we put in relatively recently, the secret ballot at the polling place.  And so many of the restrictions or hoops that you had to go through to get witnesses or to get a notary public that you would show your blank ballot to and then fill out your ballot and sign it so that you knew that no one had affected your vote, those were done to sort of accommodate both reforms, to both imitate the protections of the polling place, but also give these new mobile voters a way to vote.

What are you seeing in terms of the possibility of pressured voting--not so much fraud, but people who don't have that protection, their ballot is out there subject to the pressures that many of us face in the world.

MS. VIGIL-GIRON:  I'm getting all kinds of reports in New Mexico that--actually, you can go to the County Clerk's Office and request the list of people who requested absentee ballots or these people are going door to door and saying, "I understand you received your absentee ballot, can I  help you fill it out?" or "Can I take it for you?  Can I deliver it for you?"  And you can't do that in New Mexico, by the way, only the voter is responsible for that ballot or their home care provider or one of their relatives, and it has to be a very close relative, by the way.

And I'm also hearing about things like a very popular Senator in the State of New Mexico, Pete Domenici has got these calls, these telephone calls, into different people and saying, "I know that you're going to be voting absentee.  Don't forget.  I'm responsible for your ballot" or something to that effect.  How do I stop someone like that, a United States Senator that is calling people and telling them, "You better vote absentee, and I'm responsible"?  "I just sent you," he says, "I sent you a ballot, and you need to send it back in."

And so those kinds of things are happening, but you can manipulate anything.  Even when we had excuses for voting absentee, you can manipulate anything.  And so that's not a good argument for the safeguards, as Curtis and I have been talking about.  They have to be in place.  Only the voter can handle their ballot.

I'm going to be doing other PSAs out there that say exactly that.  Don't let anyone take your ballot to the County Clerk's Office.  Don't let anyone else, a stranger, you know, I've got to warn people against strangers coming to their--

[Tape change.]

MS. VIGIL-GIRON:  [Continuing] -- that are doing these activities they're even altering my prescribed form for requesting an absentee ballot.  That's against the law.  I've actually had to communicate with the parties--all the parties, the three major parties in the state--you cannot alter any of my prescribed forms.  And so what they're doing is they're attaching their candidates to my prescribed form so that they see all of the candidates--whether they're Democrats, Republicans, whatever--and that's a form of coercion as well.  So as soon as I hear about it, we stop it.  We try to address it as soon as possible.

MR. FORTIER:  I'm going to open it up to questions, shortly.  I think we have a mike, but while we're waiting for the mike, let me just ask Rebecca to give us one more flavor of how early voting goes on in New Mexico.  Can you give us some breakdown of how many people are voting absentee versus going to polling places and voting early and where they go--the polling places that you go to vote early, how many of them are there, but how many of them are there relative to how many polling places there would be on Election Day?

MS. VIGIL-GIRON:  Oh, my gosh, early voting or absentee voting actually began October the 5th, when voter registration ended.  And so people have been at the County Clerk's Office, exercising their right to vote since October 5th's statewide.  Early voting, in person, at alternate voting sites began October 16th--this past Saturday.

The lines that have been reported to my office, I had a woman call just the other day that said, "I had to wait more than an hour to vote, and in Bernalillo County, they're actually waiting more than an hour and a half because the lines are very, very long right now for early voting.

In Class A counties, those counties that have more than 100,000 populationwise, by  law, they must establish more than five early voting alternate locations.  Bernalillo County, Albuquerque, has established more than 11 around the City of Albuquerque, providing to those rural parts of the Bernalillo County early voting sites.  Bernalillo County, Santa Fe County, San Juan County, Dona Ana County, are considered Class A counties.

Other counties that do not, and are not, required to establish more than one are actually doubling and tripling those early voting sites because of the rural parts of New Mexico and offering those early voting sites.  So there are a lot of alternate early voting sites.  Early voting will end the Saturday prior to the Election Day.  And so those individuals that have not exercised their right to vote early or absentee will contact them in one form or another to give them an opportunity to vote on Election Day.

MR. FORTIER:  Why don't we open it up to questions.  As I say, please wait for the mike and identify yourself.  We'll start right here.

QUESTIONER:  My name is Keith Neilson.  I'm from the British Campaign to Defend the Right to a Secret Ballot.  Our organization was formed  because we believe the right to a secret ballot can only be properly protected when voters cast their ballots in the secret of a polling station or officially witness to do so.

Now, this problem of increasing voter participation, it corresponds to the general democratic interests provided it does not jeopardize fundamental rights and freedoms, such as the right to a secret ballot or either increase the risk of fraudulent electoral practices to an unacceptable level.  We are aware that there are a rather complex range of different views on this question which, at the level of political philosophy, ultimately, it can be seen that these different views even express different general approaches to democratic rights on a global scale.

MR. FORTIER:  Can you get to the question quicker.

QUESTIONER:  These differences can be detected between Europe and the United States, between the Christian and Islamic worlds.  We think this question needs to be examined carefully.  For that purpose, we are trying to organize an international conference on this matter in England next year.

Thank you.

MR. FORTIER:  I'll take that as a comment and just note that there are some absentee and early voting going on abroad, that there is an experiment with postal voting going on in Britain, which I think the idea is they are intending to expand it, but I will leave that as a comment.

Next, we will go--did I see your hand up earlier?  We'll go here in the front, and then we'll go over here.

QUESTIONER:  Thanks, John.  Garrett Mitchell from The Mitchell Report.

This is intended to be a question.  The only difficulty is how to get it there, but let me just say that--

MR. FORTIER:  Quickly.

QUESTIONER:  --I've been sitting here saying to myself this is an interesting conversation, but where are we headed?  When it's over, what will we have learned?

And it seems to me that, as this point, what we have learned is there is some data that suggests this system of choice is having what might arguably be the reverse impact, which is that it is driving down participation.  And I guess my question is, A, is that true?  B, are there some other data points that we could get here today that will help us get a sort of quantitative grip on this question so that we can address the question of whether or not the features of choice deliver benefits and deliver results that were arguably all about wanting to make these changes in the first place?

MR. GANS:  I will be delighted to share with you the data upon which I made my conclusion that it hurts turnout.  I don't think there is anything contrary to that.  If you're going to measure it by virtue of votes, and by virtue of a denominator, citizen-voting population, I don't think you can come to a different conclusion.  I think you can slice it and dice it any way you want to, and there is one election with respect to early voting that differs from the general pattern, and that's it.  The overwhelming body of evidence says it hurts turnout.

MS. VIGIL-GIRON:  I really do believe that  this is also candidate driven.  What are the candidates' messages out there?  What's at stake right now?  Voter turnout is not going to be low this year.  It's going to be very, very high.  And voter education, with the Help America Vote Act, I know that there are some things that are missing or that didn't go quite as far to be more specific in regards to how voters vote uniformly and are treated uniformly within the states, but I think that we're going into a new era here, and whether that takes away from the aspect of community or civic obligation or whatever, that's one way of looking at it.

Of course, when you provide choices out there that allow a person to vote in the comfort of their own home, and take the time to analyze and make their choices, it's taken on a different campaign out there if you will.  We're not going to go backwards any more.  We're not going to go to just one day of voting unless Congress decides in one of these decades that we're going to go back to just one day of voting only.  It's just not going to happen.  We're moving rapidly into that other direction.

Is there going to be Internet voting down the road, 20 years down the road--10, 15, 20, 30 years down the road--once we take care of all of the security aspects.  Who knows where we're going, but it's not going to go backwards.  It's going to go forward and create and evolve into something else.

MR. GANS:  The only thing I would add different on this is about two years ago I, as a critic of the potential of Internet voting, was confronted with the world that said it's going to happen, but everybody who's looked at that problem and recognizes the need for 100-percent security from software breakdown, 100-percent security from viruses and hackers, and 100-percent security for the privacy of the ballot doesn't think, at the 100-percent level, it's ever going to happen.

MR. FORTIER:  Right here.

QUESTIONER:  Hi.  My name is Amanda Gile.  I'm from American University, and actually I am an Oregon voter, so I do a mail-in ballot.

My question is for Curtis.  I was wondering what aspect of mail-in voting, specifically about mail-in voting, causes people to  not want to vote.

MR. GANS:  It's not that they cause people not to vote.  Essentially, what happens is some people forget.  They get the ballot, and they don't do that.  By providing ease, you're not necessarily providing motivation.  What you said is true, that individual elections, candidates or issues, provide the motivation, that that's why, when you analyze the data, you aggregate all the states together so that one election doesn't affect it.

I think, in your state's case, I'm not sure we'll ever roll back a significant amount on no excuse absentees, and I don't think we'll necessarily roll back a significant amount on early voting.  I think, at some point, you might roll it back in Oregon mail vote because I think it is the state that has the greatest potential for the pressured vote, for being rounded up.  And I think, at some point, that will be done to a fare thee
well in Oregon so that, as Oregon rolled back Election Day registration, they may roll back mail voting for similar reasons.

MR. FORTIER:  Let me just say one other thing.  There certainly is movement in a national sense towards more of this voting, but it is very much a state-by-state matter.  As a Northeasterner, I don't quite feel this tide the way many of my friends in the West do.  It's not only the West, but certainly some of the big states that are moving very rapidly in this direction are in the West.  So you see a great disparity from some of the Eastern, Southern, Midwestern states and from the Western.

We're going to go right here.

MR. GANS:  You are discriminating against people in back of the front row.

[Laughter.]

QUESTIONER:  Rob Watson from the BBC.  I guess this is a question for both of you, really.

I was wondering is there any data on whether there are less-spoiled ballots with absentee votes?

MR. GANS:  It is not a question for me.

MS. VIGIL-GIRON:  Well, as far as spoiled ballots are concerned, we have defined what constitutes a vote.  And so if you have an absentee ballot, for example, a paper ballot, where there was an overvote, of course, that one will not count.  Those choices will not count, but everything else will be included in the count, everything under that or in the middle or wherever it's at.

In regards to spoiled ballots, I don't have a percentage of how many have been spoiled, but that's where the spoiled would be, of course, because we vote on first-generation direct recording equipment, electronic voting machines in my state, and have been since the 1970s.  And so, of course, you can't measure that.  So it will always be the paper ballot in determining the overvote, not the undervote.  Undervotes will not be spoiled--ballots--those will not be--that was the choice of the voter, and we're assuming that that was the choice, that they didn't want to vote for these different candidates or issues on that ballot.

So the overvote, the overvote would account for anywhere between 10 percent, within normal overvote and ballots, paper ballots, in New Mexico.

MR. FORTIER:  So, just to be clear, the voting systems we use will not allow you to cast two votes for president.

MS. VIGIL-GIRON:  That's right.

MR. FORTIER:  But if you're filling out at home, you might actually check two boxes, and 10 percent of voters will actually overvote by using paper ballots.

MS. VIGIL-GIRON:  Yes.

MR. FORTIER:  I have been told to go to the back, and I think I will.  So I will go as far back as I can here and make Kim work here.

QUESTIONER:  Hi there.  My name is Chris Brown.  I'm a consultant at [inaudible] & Shaw.

Basically, our question goes back to something Curtis mentioned very briefly.  For a dozen years, now, the television networks, in particular, Comedy Central, MTV and the rest of them, have been trying to convince, especially young people, to get out and vote.  It's not part of an effort, but they are trying to increase, obviously, voter interest, but it doesn't work, as we've seen often.

Both for Rebecca and Curtis, how do we get people interested again?  Is it possible?

MR. GANS:  Sure.  You can get people interested if you have a polarizing presence like George Bush or, in '92, the three "R's"--read my lips, recession and Ross.

But if you're talking about long-term sustaining interest amongst young people, we need to improve the quality of education, we need to improve both the quantity and quality of civic education, we need to get young people back to reading newspapers, studying, debating and being tested on current events, we need to rebuild our mediating and printing institutions for the young student governments, student newspapers, [inaudible].  We need to preach different values than self-seeking hostility to government and libertarian choice from our various bully pulpits.  We need to consider, perhaps, when our budget will allow us, a mandatory year of national service.  We need to strengthen our integrating institutions--our churches, our schools, our unions, our political parties.  I think, at this juncture, we need to realign our political parties, because we've got one party way to the right of the American center and the other party without a durable message.

We need to re-regulate the broadcast industry, so the networks can't get away with three hours of coverage of conventions, that the larger broadcast outlets, the ones with the greatest market share, bear the largest responsibility for the coverage of politics and political events.  We need to cease being one of the only democracies in the world that does not regulate political advertising and television.

We need our elected officials to see their office-holding really as a public trust.  We cannot go through another decade of, "I am not going to send American boys to do what Asian boys are supposed to do.  I am not a crook.  I did not know anything about Iran Contra, read my lips, I did not have sexual relations with that woman, and we are in imminent danger of weapons of mass destruction.  We need, and we need also, to build anticipatory mechanisms in government.

If we do all of those things, and young people's turnout goes down, then I don't have a solution.

[Laughter.]

MR. GANS:  But those are the things that we need to do to have a durable resurrection of American democracy.  This election will have a high turnout, but it may very likely be, especially for young people, like the '92 election, where there was a big bump-up in turnout, and in '96 it went down below 1988.  We need to have a comprehensive address of the motivational things that have undermined both young people's participation and participation in general.

MR. FORTIER:  I have just a modest addition to that very long list, and that is I applaud the groups that are trying to get young people to vote, but I do worry that many people going off to college, their first vote is cast as an absentee vote, that they sort of begin to be socialized to let's vote away from the polling place, and I think there are probably some creative ways that we can create a polling place-like atmosphere.  Why couldn't we have you bring your ballot to places on campus, where you pull a curtain behind you?

It's not a perfect solution, but it gives you the sense of what you might be doing in the future, that you're not always going to be voting this way.  So I hope we talk about the method as well as the--

MR. GANS:  Let me just add one thing.  I said that we should not have--that the problem is primarily motivational and not procedural.  There are two procedural things that I think rank very high.  One is changing the way we draw state legislative and congressional districts because that is the thing that is creating our political polarization in the country.

And, secondly, despite the fact that it's going to lose this year, seriously considering what Colorado is doing on the issue of the electoral college or what Maine and Nebraska have done so that we have an election that is an election in which all states are in play rather than 18.

MR. FORTIER:  I am going to go right here.  Now, the middle rows are being discriminated against, but we'll get to you.

QUESTIONER:  Yes.  Hi.  Ben Caspio, American University.

Historically, since the 18- to 21-year-old bracket was allowed to vote has driven down voter turnout only because the 18- to 21-population hasn't, from my understanding, hasn't turned out in record numbers, but Mr. Gans' comment that in 2002 Oregon actually had an increase when the national average had gone down, turnout for that presidential election--no?

MR. GANS:  No.  You're talking about 2002 or 2000?

QUESTIONER:  Right, 2002.

MR. GANS:  In 2002, Oregon's turnout increased, but it was the third-lowest in the Oregon State history, and turnout nationally increased, too, by a greater amount than in Oregon.

QUESTIONER:  And in 2000 it was?

MR. GANS:  The same thing.  Oregon increased greater nationally than the national average increased, but lesser than its brethren battleground states, and 18 states had greater  increases than Oregon without resorting to mail voting.

QUESTIONER:   That, however, change--that's a pretty big change to change it from voting places to mail in.

MR. GANS:  But we have to have six elections beginning in 2000.

QUESTIONER:  But change takes time, and it's increasing each time--

MR. GANS:  It's not.

QUESTIONER:  --where it's the lowest, and then it's the second lowest, and then it's the third lowest--

MR. GANS:  No, well, Oregon's turnout in  the 2004 presidential primary was the lowest in its history.

MR. FORTIER:  We'll go right here, the second row.

QUESTIONER:  My name is Justin Jacobs, American University, Washington [inaudible].  My question is for Mr. Gans.

If absentee and early voting is here to stay, which Rebecca claims it is, how can we reform it so it can achieve its initial goal of increasing voter turnout?

MR. GANS:  You can't.  I mean, it simply has to be abandoned.  The political process has got to encourage more and more people to vote on Election Day.  The parties now have to adapt to this and therefore are doing what John has suggested, which is trying to pull every vote out early.  But I think the same pattern will exist when we do the same figures, which is we are likely to have greater increase in turnout and battleground states.  A lot of battleground states don't have these procedures, and some of the states that do have these procedures are clearly not battleground states like California.

I think the very people who I think, for the best of all motivations, pushed these programs, and that is our election officials who are honorable people in almost every case--not every case.  Some of them operate partisanly--ought to reconsider based on the evidence, and based on the other risks that this poses.

MR. FORTIER:  There are other procedural things at the polling place you would recommend--

MR. GANS:  Yes.

MR. FORTIER:  --to increase turnout: longer polling hours, voter guides, other things you--

MR. GANS:  Yes.  We should have enough polling stations to be commensurate with the population with the high-tech.  You were talking about two-hour lines in early voting and two-hour lines in Election Day voting.  There need to be more polling places and more polling stations.  Every state ought to have New York's hours--6 a.m. to 9 p.m., but we should not have an Election Day holiday because that will hurt in the end.

Every state should have the type of voter information pamphlets that exist in California, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, parts of Texas, parts of Minnesota, in which candidate biographies and self-described issue positions on every level of the election, plus arguments in favor and opposed to ballot propositions by proponents and opponents are distributed to every person who is registered and in states like California, and particularly in Washington, in different languages.

We need, I think also, to establish certain uniform standards for federal elections that can then, you know, because it's a federal election--I mean, the elections, as far as I am concerned, are properly in the hands of state officials.  Most of what's on the ballot is state, but there ought to be some uniform standards--distance from the poll, who is eligible for a provisional ballot, when should it be counted, what are the checks that ought to be made on the voting machines that we have, what constitutes voter intimidation, and what type of penalty, what type of enforcement.  These types of things will help people believe in the integrity of the process and also  make people, in the case of greater hours, and greater information, and more  polling places make it easier.

MS. VIGIL-GIRON:  The things that Curtis has outlined, of course, I agree with you, that there should be uniformity.  Now, in New Mexico, we have all of these standards in place statewide, so they are uniform in my state, and we address all of those issues.

I think that it's important, and I don't want to, of course, negate the fact that there should be voting on Election Day.  There will always be an Election Day, always, and those individuals that choose to vote on Election Day should be given that choice to vote on Election Day.

But then there are others out there that want to vote, in another manner, on other days out there, and they should also be given--it's not just presenting yourself at a polling place.  It is voting.  It is actually exercising your choice, and making your choices on that ballot, whether it's in your home or early voting or on Election Day.  That's what really, really matters.  And so I'm looking at this as evolving.  Things are going to be changing.  It's going to take on different legs out there.

What we have done with the Help America Vote Act, and addressing some things uniformly, it's going to take on a different form out there, and you all are going to have an opportunity to participate and change it the way that you want to.  Is it going to go back to just one day of voting?  It is not going to go back.  I just don't see it ever going back.  I don't care how much you lobby your state legislatures and your governors or Senators out there, it's not going to happen.  I see it as progressive.  I don't see it as breaking down an old way of doing things because--does it give you a sense of community, as I mentioned?  No, it doesn't.  It just makes me feel good inside that I voted on Election Day--I voted, period.

And I think that even those individuals that receive their ballot by mail or go to an early voting site, they come out of there feeling like I'm a part of this.  I had a part in this.  I didn't just stay home and just let it happen.  And now, if it doesn't happen my way, I can actually complain about it or I can work towards the next election in making other changes as well.

MR. GANS:  Somebody back there, the gentleman from AU, talked about how it was young people that drove down turnout.  Well, it's true that each successive generation of young people have performed worse, but this is the chart by age of turnout since 1964.  And what you see is the only groups that have increased their rate of turnout are people over 75.

[Laughter.]

MR. FORTIER:  The poll workers.

[Laughter.]

MR. GANS:  And you want to explain that, you can explain it very simply.  It's called modern medicine.  People over 75 who used to not to be able to vote can now do so physically, but the decline is in every age group, and the least people voting right now are people 18 and 19.  But when they become 30, they will vote at a lesser rate than the people who were 30 a decade ago.

MS. VIGIL-GIRON:  I have to disagree, I'm sorry.  I think that because things are changing, and because we're going to be providing more information out there, voter education, information is power.  When you have the information that's given to you, believe me, we as--you--I consider myself young, and I'm 50--you're going to be going to be going to the polling places every election cycle because we, as chief elections officials, it is our responsibility to provide you with information.  We never did.  We didn't do it in the past.  The schools didn't do it.  They're not doing it.

They're providing civics at a much lesser rate, and so that's why the decline since the 1970s, the early '70s, when 18-year-olds were allowed the right to vote.  Civics education dropped dramatically.  That's not a priority any more, and so we are now taking that responsibility to assist in the process of civic education for everyone.  And believe you me, we're going to hit the MTVs.  We're going to hit wherever it is you go to, as young people, we're going to be hitting it, and we're going to be hitting it hard.

MR. FORTIER:  We'll go here and then here.

QUESTIONER:  Mike [inaudible] with [inaudible] Report.

I have a question about a system of voter registration.  Some people move every year.  Others never change their addresses.   Nevertheless, regardless, you have to get voter registration every two years in most of the cases.

In Japan, we have a totally different system.  Everybody registers residency with the local government, and this residency registration serves for multiple purposes.  When you open a new bank account, that will serve as an ID.  When you get driver's license, the same thing will serve as an ID.  And in addition to these other things, the local government, 90 days prior to Election Day, based upon the residency registration, produces a certificate to vote and send out the vote to everybody.

And we, upon receipt of this certificate, bring it with us, go to the poll, and they check the certificate with their residency registration, and we get the ballot, and we vote.  It's very simple.  You don't have to get voter registration.

My question is, is the current system of the United States very effective and good system?

MS. VIGIL-GIRON:  I think that it's better than it used to be.  It's an issue of, and the reason why the Motor Voter Act was passed in 1995 was because there are so many people moving around.  We move around.  So every two years that we did move around, and they tried to contact us with our certificate, it would never reach us.  It would go back to that elections official, wherever it was sent from.  And so then that election official will assume that that person left the state or died, and so consequently that certificate would never reach that person.

So, with the Motor Voter Act, the National Voter Registration Act, that's why we try to communicate with the individual, working with the postal addressing system, is making sure that that person is still living at that address, and making sure that we can still contact that person and keep them as active voters within that jurisdiction.

So it's a little bit more complicated than just getting their certificate to them and also making it their responsibility, if they did not receive their certificate or their ballot or whatever it is, that they would actually motivate themselves to go and contact that local elections official and say, "You know, I didn't receive my ballot because I moved."

And so all of that takes time, and effort, and I can see where that might kind of break down the system in voting and break it down to the point where people are not motivated any longer to vote.  So it's a little bit more complicated, I think, here in the United States.

MR. GANS:  Two things.  One, if you stay in the same residence, you normally can keep your registration current in most states.  There are some states where they'll want you to renew at some point.  But we are one of the very few democracies in the world in which the onus for qualifying for the voting falls on the citizen, except in North Dakota, which has no registration.  France is another, and it has a 20-percentage-point higher turnout than we do.

If I had my druthers, I think we should make use of modern technology.  It is possible now to have nonforgible ID cards, with information about residents imprinted in them, and not part of a national database, but part of a personal database, and those cards should be given to people when they reach the age of 18 or when they become naturalized citizens, and we could get rid of the whole idea of registration and all of the issues of fraud around registration.  Whether we will do that or not, people will worry about privacy concerns, but that would help the integrity of our process and our electoral system.

MR. FORTIER:  Just one more point, obviously.  Our system is extremely decentralized, and it varies very much from state to state, with same-day registration in places and others.  And we, with the Help America Vote Act, we I think are starting or moving towards a system where we will have a much better registration system within states, but we will still have problems across states, given our federalism and in our elections.

I think this may be the last question.  We're going to go right here to the front.

QUESTIONER:  Hello.  I'm Theresa Lew from the Washington [inaudible] Program at American University.

It seems to me that all of you are concerned with increasing voter turnout.  And for a while I've been interested in voter turnout and whether it affects elections, the outcome.  And a couple articles and things that I've read have suggested that voter turnout really does not affect the outcome of an election.

I'm interested in knowing whether you agree and, if so, why is it so important to increase voter turnout?

MR. GANS:  I don't agree.

[Laughter.]

MR. GANS:  It used to be that nonvoters would have voted the same way as voters would only more so because they're inattentive.  When Reagan got 60 percent or merely 60 percent of the vote in 1984, nonvoters would have been 64 percent, although that's only at the top of the ticket.  That doesn't speak to anything else below the top of the ticket.  But that's been changing.

In 1996, Frank Luntz, on Election Day, did a poll of nonvoters.  The actual vote tally in that election for president was 49 percent Clinton, 41 percent Dole, 10 percent Perot.  Nonvoters polled by Luntz went 47 percent for Clinton, 18 percent for Dole, and 32 percent for Perot.  It's a different electorate.

But the more important question is the systemic effects of low and declining voter turnout.  If it goes down to zero, we don't have a democracy.  But voting is a lowest-common denominator political act.  If people don't vote, they tend not to participate in any other societal useful activity, which means, as voter turnout goes down, the reservoir of people to do sustaining societal tasks goes down with it.

The obverse is also true.  As voter turnout goes down, our politics becomes dominated in voting by the interested, those who are interested in policy outcomes, and the zealots--those single-issue zealots of which we have many.  And we see that currently coupled with redistricting in the Republican Party.  We are now districting both state legislators and Congress for the minimum amount of competitive districts.  In the noncompetitive districts, the relative election is the primary not the general election.  If you win the primary in a one-party district, you win.

Average turnout for a statewide Democratic primary is 10 percent for a governor or a Senator.  Average turnout for a Republican primary is 8 percent, which means an organized minority of 4 percent or less can propel somebody to victory in a primary, and that's tantamount to an election.

And what is the organized minority in the Republican Party right now?  It's the religious right, and that's you have the intransigence in state legislatures and Congress that you do.  It could happen in the Democratic Party. It's just that there's no "left" left in the Democratic Party.

If you have a turnout for young people in midterm elections, which is a better predictor of their long-term participation, of about 15 percent for 18- to 24-year-olds, you're looking at a very bleak future for both leadership and involvement.

If, as a concomitant to declining turnout you have declining allegiance to either major political parties--partially earned--you're looking for a weekly incohesion.  If nonvoting is a sign of inattention, then the potential for unchecked demagoguery and authoritarianism becomes that much greater.  If people don't learn how to make changes within the political system, while there's no clear and present danger, except things like Tim McVeigh, there is a future danger that they'll make changes outside of the political system.

And, finally, government matters.  You can ladle soup in as many soup kitchens as you want to, but only government can address poverty.  You can recycle as many cans, bottles and newspapers as you want to, but only government can address climate change, air and water pollution, whatever ways.  I mean, I'm not, you know--

So, for all of those reasons, you've got to be concerned that government of, for, and by the people, as theoretically we're the best example of becoming of, for, and by the interested few.

MS. VIGIL-GIRON:  I think that--and I have to agree with Curtis--turnout really just affects parties right now, their candidates, and getting them to those different levels.  And if we and all of us as the world, it affects the world, we need to realize how much it affects the world.  And so if we can provide as much information and education out there, we can lead the horse to water, as was mentioned, but you can't force it to drink, if you just provide choices.

And now we can provide the choices by educating the voters.  And in your states, in your respective states, they've got millions of dollars right now from the Help America Vote Act, authorized by this president, to provide voter education to teach you the rule of this game here of government and how it works.  And we all have to engage ourselves and realize that it is only our government that can address all of those issues.   That's what I'm more concerned with is you understanding what is at stake here for you today, and for you, and your family, and your children in the future.  That's the most important thing.  Whether you want a turnout or not, that's up to you, but understand what is at stake here.

MR. FORTIER:  I encourage you all to go out and vote.  We're not going to take any more questions, but I'd like to thank the panelists today for coming and talking about a trend that really is taking America, and some of the pluses and minuses of it.  You're going to go back to your various states.  The viewers out there are from all 50 states and the District of Columbia.  Consider, first, that you vote but, second, that you think about the way in which your state and district is conducting this vote.  And if it's what you want, let your voice be here.

Let's thank the panel for the discussion.

[Whereupon, the proceedings were concluded.]