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No doubt officials of both major political parties will publicly lament the findings of this week's WW cover story, which shows that the gap between voting rates of young and old voters is as big as ever--with serious consequences. In reality, their roguish behavior is part of the problem. Two years ago Democrats and Republicans had more than a quarter-billion dollars to boost political participation. But because partisan strategists are interested in motivating only the voters they can count on to toe the party line, such "party-building" activities are a sham. In fact, party leaders would rather have a small turnout of faithful voters than a large turnout of voters who may swing an election to the opposition. "Low turnout has the silent blessing of many and the outright encouragement of a few," says Secretary of State Phil Keisling, a Democrat. That includes the leaders of his own party. Political parties have tremendous resources to bolster voter turnout. In the 1996 election cycle, the national Democratic and Republican parties pocketed $263 million in so-called "soft money," unlimited contributions given directly to parties; by law these funds can be used only for voter drives and party-building activities. A WW investigation last year, however, found that soft money was used by the Democratic Party of Oregon not for voter drives but for ads for individual candidates ("Dirty Money," WW, April 2, 1997). WW's investigation found that during the 1996 election, Democratic leaders routinely mixed "hard" money, which can be used to help specific candidates, and "soft" money, which is reserved for party-building activities. They then engaged in a game of semantics in defending how they spent the money. National media later reported the same thing happening across the country. Imagine what might happen if the parties really did use that money to get people--including young people--engaged in the political process. Instead, party leaders continue to violate the spirit of election laws to benefit individual candidates and to the detriment of voters of all ages. |
