Last election day, voters in Chicago and across the nation won another international civic booby prize. Only about 70 percent of registered voters and half of the voting-aged population cast ballots. Nationally, it was the worst performance since 1924, when most blacks were effectively barred from voting in the South. For all of the United States outside of the south, the turnout of eligible voters this year was the lowest since 1824.
Chicagoans saw how this might work in 1983. For years, black voters took a small and declining part in local elections; they did not feel the Daley government represented them. Then a huge increase in voter registration, aided by changes in voter registration procedures, made victory possible for a liberal black whose message stirred black voters’ passions. This year, there is less enthusiasm about the election and less effort to register voters. Turnout is likely to be low, and the beneficiaries will probably be the remnants of the old machine. But the political spectrum has shifted: even the machine heirs now at least talk in favor of reform ideas, and conservative white politicians acknowledge the need for minority representation.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The problem goes back to the late 19th century, they write. White American males, motivated by patronage and “tribalisms” of religion and ethnicity as much as by middle-class virtue, had turned out in large numbers earlier in the century. But with the growth in power of the big corporations after the Civil War, many farmers and laborers began to respond to class-conscious, economic rallying cries, such as those signaling the rise of Populism.
During the 1930s there was a new surge of voting interest, mainly in the north. The growing labor movement and some big city machines, such as Ed Kelly’s in Chicago, mobilized voters to support the New Deal, which in turn helped both the cities and labor. Cloward and Piven argue that voting barriers, particularly those that still excluded blacks in the south, may have kept the Democrats from becoming even more of a European-style, class-oriented party. As it happened, Roosevelt had to strike a deal with the conservative Democratic party of the south, which suppressed blacks and also fought the more liberal elements of his New Deal. The compromise might not have been necessary had southern blacks been able to vote.
Political scientist Ruy A. Teixeira, in his similarly titled recent book, Why Americans Don’t Vote: Turnout Decline in the United States, 1960-1984, argues that nonvoting has increased in recent decades because people are more mobile and less rooted to their communities, because they feel that their vote would have little effect, and because political campaigns don’t involve them. But these explanations beg the question of why people feel so indifferent. Poor people, particularly.
Kuttner is the neo-populist, Osborne the neo-progressive. Populism was the movement associated with the late-19th-century revolt of small farmers, sharecroppers, and workers against the big economic powers; progressivism was the early-20th century effort to reform and tame a chaotic American economy through regulation, education, and protection of the common national interests.
Reagan capitalized on the people’s spreading sense of discontent and powerlessness as the United States stumbled through the 70s. America had not been able to impose its will on the world, and even under Reagan could impose it only on tiny Grenada. America had been slipping economically, and under Reagan slid even more, although the wealthy fared far better than they had in decades.
