well i i been uh i've probably had more time than you have to think about this subject so i'll tell you is is it a serious problem yes i do believe it's a serious problem however there are solutions to it
um-hum
yeah
um-hum
um-hum
and foremost uh where we compare we that we are now doing fifty percent of our uh people are voting uh
we're probably making a comparison against uh some European and uh and uh uh say newer republics that uh that have very high percentages
um-hum
um-hum
uh so uh one of the reasons that that uh
one one of the reasons that we could get uh one of the reasons that it is lower in the United States is that mostly we hold it on Tuesdays God knows why we hold it on Tuesdays and then we further complicate it by saying you know we'll keep the polls open until eight o'clock
what
right
most people uh a great number of people now work at various at different jobs that if a third of the people are shift workers they won't be able to get to the to the polls in any case if they uh have to work late into the evening and not get up
right
my solution to that is that we hold it on Sundays as do probably sixty to seventy percent of the European countries now
oh really they hold it on the weekends
they hold it on the week no they hold it on a either a Saturday or a Sunday or at least a day when when uh a great number of people aren't working in in America that's not true because a a great number of people work on Sundays
Sunday
uh-huh
huh
well uh
but but that's one of my solutions so
i i know here in Dallas that they've just instituted in the last couple of years a um a real long period of time that you can absentee vote before the elections and
they i don't think they've seen a really high improvement
have you absentee voted in in in Texas well i have absentee voted in uh New Hampshire and it's a fairly fairly complicated process where you have to go pick up the ballot
no no i always vote
oh really
i don't say it's that complicated but part of the process also is that you must register preregister at some particular point New Hampshire is fairly easy but other states you have to register every couple of years and uh
hum
to absentee vote specifically
well to vote to vote to just vote so registrations are perhaps a a problem also and we're the mobile mobile society uh people are always mobile you know one out of every seven people moves every year
oh
um-hum
uh that's almost a fourteen percent turnover every you know if you compound that that uh if it is difficult to register to vote that would remove your eligibility to vote
um-hum
but i don't think it's difficult enough to prevent people who are motivated in the first place who or who are not just motivated who really believe that their they
well
their voice is heard i mean and the people that i've talked to
well maybe that's another factor the motivational factor the motivational factor is probably i
right i think that is the biggest one that's the biggest problem i
well that's diminished by we we've noticed this in particular i i'm just read two books one of them is Whose Stars and Stripes Now
um-hum
the uh trivial pursuit of the presidency in nineteen eighty eight it's a fairly decent book i mean it's uh
oh really
hum
it's preceded by uh several other books by these guys uh Wake Me Up When It's Over was about the eighty four elections and i forget what the other books were but any case uh it it it's uh
uh the uh uh there was the Blue Smoke and Mirrors was the one in eighty two uh they these guys uh have taken the place of Theodore White on reporting elections
in any case they say that uh there's a definite trend uh well you know toward candidates using negative voting it's the only way that you can use television effectively
i don't understand that why do uh is that just because they have such a low opinion of the public and the public's um gullibility
no the public would rather hear something negative about the other guy
than uh than than a positive factor and you and you know to if you if you go on the attack and and put some sensational thing before the public as Mike Dukakis learned in the last campaign
and it's not refuted people will you know uh believe it if you don't refute it as he didn't that that there must be some truth to the matter see
well he did refute it
he he refuted it just wasn't effective enough to
well he didn't refute it until the last two weeks of the campaign he didn't believe anybody would believe that and indeed his trend started upward
well that see i i didn't believe anybody would believe that either i i i guess i have i have a hard time coming to terms with the the fact that the American public really
well they do
was you know so
well don't give too much credit to the American public for their motivational ability and and and it
well then how can a democracy work then how how can it work
well it uh well i don't know is it working i mean that's that's the question i guess the question also is that we discovered is that they don't throw rascals out everybody seems disappointed but they don't throw the rascal out their own rascal
right
right
uh my my solution to
to part of this is is to
to make it an economic economic incentive for people to vote that sounds rather crass i think because then then you're saying well uh
what
you know you it could be convoluted convoluted in many ways where people would actually uh by paying them i mean you know you take a certain amount off their income tax or property tax or whatever
huh
but that it would be very difficult to administer because i'm sure that any time money and votes are involved it just the whole thing just stinks
well
how about how about the reverse of that when i've heard about England's elections they are allowed to run for what a total of six or eight weeks
even for the higher offices in the in the land what if we
totally took money out of the campaign made just severely limited the campaigns so money wasn't so much of an issue i feel like if if we did that people would have a lot higher confidence
that their vote was counting rather than their contributions would count
yeah but the idea is to get the individual to the polls and and and we have to make it as easy as possible for him to get to the polls
i don't think i don't care how easy it is for them i don't think they're going to because they don't think that their that anybody listens to their vote they think whoever has the bucks they really think that the packs
you know no matter what you're promised during a campaign and these days we're promised hardly anything of substance right
oh you mean the special interest groups
and uh and uh yeah no matter what a uh candidate promises during the campaign which isn't very much specific any that they don't promise anything specific these days but whatever you're promised they just
they just reverse themselves depending on who pays them what once they get into office i mean i think that's the
well read my lips and and and no new taxes and yet Bush did that but i mean but but he's excused from that generally people i've read polls now where they've excused him because there was a a definite necessity to balance the budget
yeah yeah
well then why did he say that during his campaign then he should it was totally
oh he he he gave it that he he did he did he promised the best he could and he's the president and he should
he should address those problems and if there needs to be a change in a period of time why what was so funny about it is that i guess that it happened so rapidly you know he knew it he actually knew it and being associated with government he should be held up to the light for that and maybe he will
yeah yeah yeah
yeah yeah well
but i think it's uh i mean i think you
you still have a view that the American voter is different from other voters and he's motivated because we happ en to be the cradle of liberty and all that i think voters are motivated uh
what about what about voters in the other countries that you're talking about like in the European countries where they have higher turnouts
and well the newer democracies because it's going to be totally different but
well i don't know if they have higher turnouts overall i don't think England has i think England has about a seventy percent sixty five percent turn out
you don't think so
uh-huh
i think that we just discovered in this in in the Indian elections is one of the greatest and massive things in the in the world
oh
uh just it was got violent more violent every year they went down to almost fifty percent in this election before they blew up Gandhi but
right
oh really
simply because people were so concerned about
yeah
their inability that to that their vote doesn't count anyway
hum
and the corruption of politics in in in that situation
but then but you know everything is relative to when uh you know we had higher turnouts because at that time we talk about the turnout relative to the eligible voter right
yeah
i mean is but but before these enormous before this Voting Rights Act
what we had was a a great deal of our population uh mainly the Blacks in the South and the Hispanics were precluded by
um-hum
oh
by uh voting laws uh from registering from their eligibility to register now everybody's available
oh
so if you really computed it they probably when we said we had a seventy percent turnout in nineteen fifty we really only had a fifty percent turnout because all the eligible voters
oh i see because right
weren't qualified disqualified were disqualified
you know the it was skewed by the eligible voters being less than the total population of
but isn't that isn't that kind of a blanket racist kind of thing to say the Blacks and Hispanics and other minorities just don't vote or is that just the the truth
no i think the high there's a higher percentage in in certain Black areas of voters i don't know about Hispanics you know
yeah
i just
i i mean i haven't studied the statistics well enough to i mean i think in this sort of a
well
conversation we can only do our own reactions
right right but you know that just made me think of something that happened down here in Dallas last year they have this huge fight going over redistricting here and at one point they did they took another vote on it
um-hum
and they uh the minorities could not get enough of a vote out to to pass their plan and this is something that had been going on for months it was on the news every night
they and they have had lawsuits over it i mean it was it was a major issue and there still wasn't enough minority vote to get to pass the plan that they were backing
so that's you you know i think that you have really hit on something there
to say that uh
those
what do you mean
well with the minorities
and we're saying we have low voter turnout maybe it is is uh
now that we have minorities included in the
you know Karen i wonder if we are recording
why did you not press one
i did press one but usually by this time they tell me that the time is up
