Curtain Time: Getting Voters Into the Booth : Elections: Thousands of volunteers will swarm area in a bid to boost turnout at the polls. Candidates fear last-minute apathy can quash a campaign.

Election Eve is upon us at last. The ads have been aired, the campaign mailers stamped and sent. The strategists have strategized, the pundits have pontificated and the stars of this show--the candidates--have boasted and bellowed and begged themselves hoarse.

Staggering millions have been spent in this year’s political frenzy, and now-- Finally! Thankfully!-- you figure it’s over.

Well, you figured wrong.

The political honchos are leaving nothing to chance. Because after months of hard work, their campaigns can flop if they fail in one final mission--getting you, the voter, behind that curtain, face to face with your ballot.

Beginning tonight and stretching through closing time at the polls Tuesday, thousands of volunteers will fan out across Los Angeles County in a ritual the insiders call “GOTV”--political shorthand for get-out-the-vote. Whether Republican or Democrat, independent or Libertarian, they are a campaign’s final hope--ambassadors whose perseverance and diplomatic skills can help make a difference in a tight race.

Some may show up on your front porch, urging you to vote and offering to drive you to the polls, baby-sit your kids or even keep an eye on a baking lasagna while you fulfill your public duty.

Others will telephone your home or leave a message dangling from your doorknob--a reminder of poll hours and locations and, not incidentally, of which candidates and initiatives you should be sure to support.

Others will stage rallies near busy intersections, drape banners from overpasses and roam your neighborhood in a loudspeaker truck--blaring partisan propaganda that will be difficult to tune out.

“Good GOTV involves a little bit of everything,” said Karen Skelton, Southern California field director for the California Democratic Party. “But the essence of it is doing politics the old-fashioned way--by reaching out and talking to people. . . . Let me tell you, it works.”

Although there appear to be no authoritative studies measuring the effectiveness of GOTV, Skelton and others in her business believe it can make a difference of up to 3 percentage points in some races. Considering the thin margins of victory in some of California’s elections--in 1982 George Deukmejian defeated Tom Bradley for governor by 93,345 votes out of 7,876,335 cast--most political pros say GOTV is worth the work.

California’s election officials are also enthusiastic. “We’re all for get-out-the-vote drives,” said Caren Daniels-Meade, chief of elections for the secretary of state. “It’s tough to measure their impact, but we believe they help.”

Academic experts are somewhat less convinced, but several confessed a nostalgic fondness for GOTV. H. Eric Schockman, a political scientist at USC, calls it “one of the last remnants of old-time fun left in campaigns.”

“After all the television ads have been placed and all the media mud has been slung, (GOTV) is a way to involve your volunteers and have some true human contact,” said Schockman, who is studying the cost-effectiveness of get-out-the-vote efforts.

More crucially for candidates, GOTV is a hedge against the possibility that their supporters could flake out on Tuesday.

“The campaign records are littered with the bones of people who thought they had their votes in hand, and then found that their supporters just got lazy or went to the beach on Election Day,” said Leo McElroy, a political consultant in Sacramento. “GOTV is an insurance policy--something you’ve just got to do.”

In California it is considered particularly vital, largely because of the state’s location in the Pacific time zone. State election officials worry that when television networks declare a presidential victor based on election returns in the East, many Californians don’t bother to vote. This, in turn, imperils candidates further down the ticket--particularly in a year like 1992, when two U.S. Senate seats are open and races in more than 40 Assembly, state Senate and congressional districts are neck and neck.

Given the stakes and their record of photo-finish losses in recent elections, California’s Democrats have mounted a particularly ambitious GOTV effort this campaign season. Although the party’s budget for GOTV (about $2 million) is not unprecedented, its strategy, its use of computer technology and the size of its volunteer corps--40,000 strong and 10,000 in Los Angeles County alone--are.

For starters, the party decided to focus its energy on precincts with low voter turnout and “occasional voters”--those who cannot be counted on to visit the polls. The Democrats also are using a supermarket-style bar code system to help them keep track of their targeted voters and weed out those who have moved.

“In the past, we had to have some poor guy on the midnight shift log all this stuff in a computer manually,” said Bob Mulholland, political director of the state Democratic Party. “The new system allows us to just wave a wand over the bar code and update our voter list instantaneously. It’s a massive timesaver.”

Republicans are known to be more reliable voters, but the GOP still takes pains to remind the faithful of their obligation on Election Day. Lorelei Kinder, executive director of the state party, said California’s Republican organization is spending about $6 million on its GOTV operation, less than in 1988. The GOP will deploy 24,000 volunteers on get-out-the-vote duty around the state, about 4,000 of them in the Los Angeles area.

Jack Harriman, the Republicans’ GOTV chairman for Los Angeles County, said the party’s effort is “not as substantial as we had in, say, ‘84, when you had a popular President running for reelection.”

“But since the Bush-Clinton race began tightening a few weeks ago, we’ve had a huge outpouring of volunteers who have wanted to get involved,” he said. “We may not have fancy supermarket (bar code) technology, but we’re getting the job done.”

The parties’ GOTV efforts are aided by labor unions, service clubs and scores of other groups that donate offices for phone banks, vans to carry people to the polls, coffee and pizza for volunteers, and countless other odds and ends.

More help comes from organizations active on behalf of a particular ballot initiative. Coalition ‘92, is a Los Angeles network of 100 groups united in opposition to Proposition 165, which would cut welfare benefits and give new budget powers to Gov. Pete Wilson.

Executive Director Sharon Delugach said Coalition ’92 is making a GOTV push everywhere from Santa Monica to the San Gabriel Valley, with a strong focus on South-Central Los Angeles. She estimates that the group will spend $85,000 to organize about 1,000 precincts, an effort she predicts will yield 50,000 votes against Proposition 165.

Unified around the theme “human needs, not corporate greed,” Coalition ’92 is distinctive in its use of volunteers in their own neighborhoods.

“We believe people are more likely to listen to a neighbor--who drives down the same potholed street and whose kids go to the same overcrowded schools--than to a stranger,” Delugach said. “Our volunteers are also extremely dedicated. They realize they may have to stir someone’s soup, hold someone’s baby or tie someone’s shoes to get them to vote.”

Ruby Ross, a mother of seven, is one of those volunteers. Ross, whose South-Central neighborhood is near Vermont and Slauson avenues, said she became a Coalition ’92 volunteer because “I’m trying to do my part for change.”

“A lot of people sit complacent, and they don’t figure their vote is worth anything,” Ross said. “But if they see me--a mother with a lot of responsibilities--out there doing my part, I think that might motivate them a little bit.”

Individual candidates also mount GOTV drives. Although they benefit from the work of their parties, those in close races usually make an extra push just to be safe.

Take Downey’s Democratic Assemblyman Bob Epple, who is fighting off a fierce challenge by Republican Phillip D. Hawkins. Epple is using his own bar code computer system and has recruited more than 300 volunteers to walk precincts, telephone voters and give rides to those who need them.

Lynn Montgomery, Epple’s campaign coordinator, said she and her boss became faithful GOTV devotees four years ago, when the assemblyman made his first run for the Assembly and eked out a victory.

“Bob won that election by 220 votes, and I was one of the people down there at the registrar’s office for 10 days watching them count the ballots,” Montgomery said. “I learned my lesson that year, and I missed my anniversary--Nov. 15--because of it. I don’t want to go through that again.

“So I am a very big believer in GOTV.”