Changing the Voter Profile

...They aim first at their own members, then focus on places —service agencies, college campuses— where the most likely prospects gather...

...For the statistics show that eight out of 10 people who are registered cast ballots in a Presidential election year...

...the black-oriented Operation Big Vote (Washington, D.C...

...Few of them brought up or, when reminded, showed sufficient respect for the iron law of unintended consequences that invigorates every significant shift in political behavior...

...The 1984 wave has taken the mainstream marketing procedures—computerized phone calling, targeted direct mail appeals—and codified them with the tested older methods in self-help manuals...

...A relatively higher turnover among elected officials who fail to adjust to the expanded electorate, and an increase in the number of candidates drawn from the underrepresented seems inevitable...

...One of its objectives is to add the signing up of voters to the routine duties of public employees...

...My own suspicion—despite what the political scientists say—is that it would be a mistake for the Democrats to assume registering large numbers of additional voters alone will assure them victory in November...

...My chats with some three dozen voter registration leaders on both the Right and Left made it clear that most thought the people they were signing up would vote their way...

...As it happens, each Democratic primary that passes is also a plus for her group...

...I'd give my right arm and half of my left to find a' Jessica Jackson' somewhere," said a feminist active in the Women's Vote Project...

...Beefed-up registration should speed the trend toward political campaigns that cost more, that substitue technology and mass communications for a candidate's personal appearances, and that depend for foot soldiers on alliances with nonparty organizations described as "community-based" or "grassroots" by those who agree with them and as " special interests" by those who do not...

...Individual Democrats tend to aid drives concentrated on union members, women, blacks, Midwestern and Western Hispanics, poor people, city dwellers, nursing home residents and nurses, and the customers of quick-stop groceries and fast-food chains...

...various groups in the Southwest (San Antonio) and Midwest (Columbus, Ohio) devoted to Hispanics and American Indians...

...In Ohio, a high school assistant principal was helping a senior apply to welding school...

...the Voter Education Project and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (Atlanta...

...Co-chaired by a Democratic man from Alabama and a Republican woman from Rhode Island, its strategies include cooperating with the Ad Council in designing advertisements that will get free exposure worth at least $50 million this year...

...All, acting as deputy registrars, informed those they were speaking to that he or she could be signed up to vote then and there in less than five minutes...

...by the Federal government...

...It would be impolitic, however, for either pro-Reagan Republicans or Democrats worried about the unpredictability of new voters in particular areas to act accordingly...

...and Andrew Mollison is the chief political writer for the Cox Newspapers...

...It's like a fever...

...These registration drives are being backed up by huge nonpartisan advertising campaigns...

...But again like jazz, the mechanics of voter sign-up campaigns have evolved since losing their regional and ethnic exclusivity...

...Taking part in the effort are more than 200 national organizations, ranging from the Alpha Kappa Alpha black sorority and the YWCA to the AFL-CIO and the National Association of Realtors, plus uncounted hundreds of unaffiliated local groups...

...The four are among better than half a million Americans now spending from two hours to 10 weeks trying to increase the number of voters in the most certain way possible...

...Even though Jackson and the mayors do little themselves when it comes to the nitty-gritty of people signing up, they appeal primarily to the underregistered segments of society...

...The best-financed national registration group, perhaps because the least adventuresome, is the National Association of Secretaries of State...

...Other major voter registration specialists include: the Citizens Leadership Foundation (Chicago), which encourages volunteers to work in service settings such as hospital waiting rooms and day care centers...

...Political scientists and practitioners know that increased registration is likely to benefit the Democratic candidate for President...

...Republicans assist the nonpartisan programs aimed at executives, Southeastern Hispanics, Asian-Americans, real estate brokers and homeowners, suburbanites, military personnel, white Protestants, doctors, Americans overseas— and the owners and managers of those franchise groceries and restaurants...

...This so threatens the traditional political balance that in the lower house of the Michigan Legislature, Republicans and renegade Democrats boldly tacked a rider onto their version of the state budget banning Human Serve from the three Michigan agencies with the most low-income clients...

...The best are those prepared by the National Coalition on Black Voter Participation, the National Association of Social Workers and the League of Women Voters...

...The AFL-CIO portion of the women's drive was not officially launched until this month...

...Indeed, Ann Lewis, political director of the Democratic National Committee, calculates plausibly that the 87 million turnout of 1980 need only be boosted to 100 million this year for the Democrats to win...

...For in some states, the unions, which play a key role in mobilizing signup efforts, put off their heaviest push until the local primary or caucus was over because they had found that not all their members favored Walter Mondale...

...Human Serve, based in New York, was created by middle-class activists to provide expertise and legal advice to local drives, as well as coordinate their activities...

...A Georgian was waiting on a customer in a quick-stop food store...

...For example: • Besides helping to reverse the 20-year decline of voter participation in Presidential elections, they should contribute to maintaining the upswing of votes cast in off-year congressional races that began six years ago...

...the Moral Majority (Lynchburg, Virginia...

...Or for the Republicans to doubt that they face a new challenge in their quest to hold on to the White House...

...Their placing more political power in the grasp of the poor, the young, women, and members of racial minorities raises the possibility of a dramatic shift in future tax and spending priorities at every level of government—with greater emphasis on improving basic education and combating crime in the streets and suites...

...That is why the nonwhite and female mayoral victories of the past two years, and the inspiration offered by candidates such as Jesse Jackson are worth their weight in gold to nonpartisan voter organizations...

...and by numerous state secretaries of state who have discovered that getting out the vote is a highly appealing, noncontroversial way of transforming a clerical post into a high-visibility platform...

...It's the biggest voter registration movement in history, the most significant since 'Mississippi Summer' exactly 20 years ago, which came right after passage of the Voting Rights Act," says Richard Cloward of the Human Serve Fund...

...After all, voting per se is seen as a welcome activity in a democracy...

...The same way white musicians learned from blacks about jazz, these organizations use recruitment techniques perfected over two decades in local drives conducted by blacks for blacks in the South and some non-Southern counties under the umbrella of the Voting Rights Act...

...They can and do accept corporate tax-deductible contributions, union gifts, foundation grants, and research assistance from think tanks or universities...

...by partisan programs costing the Republicans $8 million and the Democrats $500,000 nationally in addition to probably almost as much again at the state level...

...But on the whole, the voter registration campaigns are a movement, not a tactic, and their potential influence promises to extend far beyond 1984...

...Like the union organizing of the Depression, the scrap metal and paper collections of World War II, the 1950s and '60s civil rights movements, and more recent environmental and nuclear freeze campaigns, the registration drives depend ultimately upon the enthusiasm of unpaid volunteers...

...In any event, nonpartisan registration efforts have more sources of support than parties or candidates...

...So much so, in fact, that a Texas congressman who stretched Federal law by using his free mailing privilege to send registration postcards to every household in his district ran into virtually no criticism, and received thanks and congratulations from constituents in all walks of life...

...Andin Indiana, a volunteer backed by a Federal court order giving him access to an unemployment center approached applicants as they waited on line...

...That does not count the voter sign-up concerts radio stations are holding as promotional gimmicks for their particular audiences, spanning the spectrum from evangelical Christian to rock music listeners...