Published: May 09, 2008 02:54 pm         

Column: There’s something happenin’ here

What it is ain’t exactly clear

TERRE HAUTE, Ind — Tuesday's impressive turnout at Indiana polls was a textbook good news/bad news equation.



The good, of course, was that hundreds of thousands of Hoosiers made time on a weekday to get to their official polling place and cast a ballot. Added to the hundreds of thousands of Indiana residents who already voted at satellite centers or via absentee ballot, participation may have been unprecedented for a primary — and bumping up against some general elections of late.



The bad news: It took a hotly contested Democratic presidential race to set a fire under Hoosiers and get them engaged in a process that occurs regularly, that deeply affects our lives, but which we’ve been blowing off at an increasing rate.



Not that we are alone.



Entire books, college courses and political strategy seminars exist to address the reasons so many of the freest folks in the world treat voting as if it were an unpleasant, expensive chore to be avoided — like a root canal — rather than a perk of citizenship that people have died trying to attain.



Theories abound.



Free equals worthless — In a consumerist society where high social status and power come with the acquisition and exhibition of expensive things, who values what costs nothing?



If the schlub who drives a 20-year-old car and lives in a run-down neighborhood can have the same privilege as the oil company executive who commutes by limo from a gated community, what sort of “privilege” is that?



Modern disenchantment — Politics is so disgusting now, on every level of the game, ordinary people are turned off.



The perception of today’s candidates, especially in the national arena, is rarely expressed in glowing terms. The more common view is of liars, flip-floppers, opportunists, crooks, hypocrites — you get the drift. We look back on presidents such as Lincoln, Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy and (for some) Reagan, and we see a downward pattern ever since.



This negativity has spread, more and more, to state and local races. Anyone who seeks, let alone holds, office is tainted, suspect or well on the way to becoming both. People are tired of holding their nose and picking the least offensive candidate. Why perpetuate the corruption by voting?



My vote doesn’t count anyway — With political action committees, multi-zillion-dollar lobbyists, powerful special interest groups and the electoral college, an individual’s vote is lost before it’s cast.



Who cares which candidate or issue Jane Q. Public in Anytown, U.S.A., decides to support? Only chumps think one vote can make a difference.



The truth about voter alienation likely includes some or all of the above theories along with myriad other factors. They run the gamut, from a human tendency to take the long-standing and familiar for granted to the virtual neutralization of the nation’s No. 1 and No. 2 communications tools — telephones and the Internet — in the act of voting.



Millions may make contributions to candidates or add their name to petitions from the comfort and privacy of their own p.c., hand-held device or phone, but they can’t use any of those essential tools to register or to vote.



You would think that this technology gap would be of major concern to legislators who miss few opportunities to lecture us on the necessity of a vibrant voting public for a healthy democracy.



You would think that if these elected officials really wanted to see more Americans take part in their constitutionally granted franchise, they would busy themselves and every learned expert available in finding ways to attract citizens to the polls.



Instead, what we are getting from statehouses — most overtly from Indiana’s — are laws that make voting more difficult.



In the name of fighting voter fraud (a phenomenon that is much talked about but seen about as often as Sasquatch), Indiana Republicans have fashioned the most arduous voter identification process in the 50 states. And the U.S. Supreme Court, with its majority of radical conservatives, just ruled, 6-3, that arduousness is OK.



So, why did so many people in Indiana and North Carolina vote Tuesday? Why so many last month in Pennsylvania and earlier in states from California to Arkansas?



Voting is still free (except for a state ID), it’s still a common privilege. None of the viable presidential candidates is an outsider. Ron Paul, the one genuine outsider, made some Republican debates interesting, but he’s not grabbed enough support in any state to be of consequence. (In Indiana, he won about 10,000 fewer votes than Mike Huckabee, who’s been out of the race for months.)



While Barack Obama has called for no more business as usual and has painted Hillary Clinton and John McCain as the jaded, old Washington guard, he still comes at the task as a U.S. senator who spent more than $3.8 million on television advertising in Indiana, alone.



Meanwhile, the lobbyists and PACS have never been as active as they are this spring and promise to be right into November. The electoral college still exists, and one vote is still just one vote.



The only thing that is different this time around is perception.



Young, old and middle-age voters are behaving as if their participation is a treasured duty, not an empty option. And the catalyst for this is an election for president, an office whose actual impact is as far removed from individual voters’ day-to-day lives as it gets.



How to transfer that heat down to the levels on which every vote actually does count remains a mystery — almost as much of a mystery as why the 2008 primaries have made it look like the good old days in U.S. voting.



Stephanie Salter writes for The Tribune Star in Terre Haute, Ind. She can be reached at stephanie.salter@tribstar.com.