For Non-Voters, Ballot Box Offers No Representation : Politics: They also say they don’t have time to go to polls. Numbers are growing as election turnouts decline.

Inside the aged brick walls of P.S. 152 in Woodside, Queens, the members of the PTA executive council are squabbling this morning about the rules of democracy.

They have argued so loudly and so long in their inimitable outer-borough accents that the school principal has banished them from a room off the main office to the library upstairs. The librarian in turn has fled to the teachers’ lounge.

A dozen parents, knees squeezed against the edges of child-sized tables, debate the finer points of parliamentary procedure, the most ethical way to let a contract, the most representative manner of making a decision. The issue is which photographer should take class pictures this year. Laura AlQaisi, a pale, curly-haired mother of three, and Musharaf Hussain, a Pakistani-born CPA in suit and tie, do not hesitate to jump into the fray.

But when the question before the parents is who should be the mayor of New York, or governor, or a member of Congress, or President of the United States, both of them opt out.

Like most of their neighbors here, and like nearly half of the nation’s voting-age population--those 18 or older, citizen and non-citizen--they do not cast ballots in government elections. In the 1992 presidential election, for instance, only 55.2% of that voting age population turned out, according to the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate.

Goes Even Lower

In off-year congressional elections, participation sinks even lower. In 1994, the year that Republicans wrested control of Congress, only 38.8% of the voting-age public took part, the American Electorate group reported. That meant more than 113 million adults stayed on the sidelines.

They contribute to a political silence that has been interpreted by academics as everything from contentment with the status quo that breeds non-participation to simple apathy to profound alienation from all aspects of society. But what do these non-voters say when given a chance to speak for themselves?

In Queens, they say they need time to make a living. Some talk of not wanting to take off work to vote and others of wanting to stay out of the jury pool--a widespread, but nonetheless false belief since jury pools are drawn not just from registration records, but also from other lists, including drivers’ licenses.

But most important, they believe a ballot is no way to make their views known, no way to have an impact. It merely presents a false choice.

“You’ve got a couple of check boxes,” says AlQaisi, 28. “Where do you put down your opinion?”

Explains Hussain, who is 44: “The difference between the candidates is so small. Dump one?” He turns his palms out. “But select who?

“It’s like you’re sitting down and your wife is making dinner,” he says. “You want roast beef. Your wife makes only two dishes and neither one is roast beef. Why should you eat?”

These non-voters are not at society’s edge. Though studies have found that participation in elections is falling fastest among the poorest and least educated nationwide, the downward trend is also quite evident among the middle class and wealthy.

Woodside is located in New York’s 7th Congressional District, which even by U.S. standards has a dismal attendance record at the polls. In the last presidential election, only 35% of the voting-age residents registered their choice, about 20 points below the national average.

The population here is varied in terms of ethnicity, race, income, social class, age and immigration status. They are second- and third-generation Americans, as well as natives of Greece, Ireland, Cuba, the Philippines, Korea and Ecuador.

They are construction workers, salespeople, teachers and government employees. They live in rented apartments, upscale co-ops, public housing projects and rows of attached brick or frame homes right out of the television show, “All in the Family.” It is an area that served as the political base for some of the state’s most prominent politicians, including both former Gov. Mario M. Cuomo and Geraldine A. Ferraro, the former vice presidential candidate who once represented the 7th District in Congress.

Jews and blacks tend to vote regularly here, says Jim Chapin, a former Rutgers University historian who has studied the 7th District’s demographics. White ethnics are under-registered, he says, as are Latinos. (“Your Irish are the first ones to stay home,” says one county Democratic Party operative. “And the Greeks! If they don’t start voting, they’ll always have an Italian councilman.”).

They’re Involved

Many of the non-voters here are far from disengaged. They not only volunteer at their children’s schools and tend to their sick parents, they run toy drives at church and organize prayer sessions at the mosque. They have protested South African apartheid and the Bosnian arms embargo.

Why would they be involved at that level yet not vote? “Maybe because you see the end results” in community work, muses AlQaisi. “Even an election itself is just a beginning.”

Indeed, if the non-voters questioned recently here are the norm, they have concluded that America’s problems are too complex to solve and that government serves only the will of corporations, no matter who holds power.

The true rulers in their America are the money men, who care more about special tax breaks and untrammeled commerce than fixing potholes, teaching children or putting the country’s might on the side of justice in world affairs, they say.

“There is no one to speak for the common man in the United States,” says Hussain.

These non-voters also believe they must look out for themselves, putting their time and energy into building financial security, because the government will not help them when they are too old to work.

“I’m very selfish. I’m a terrible citizen, but what the hell. . . . These politicians aren’t going to help me when I need it,” says Sylvie, 36, a naturalized citizen born in France. She doesn’t vote because she “doesn’t care.” Sitting in a beauty parlor chair while a hairdresser brushes honey-blonde color into her dark roots, she declines to reveal her last name because she doesn’t pay taxes, either.

At Sylvie’s dinner table, politics is never discussed. Only topics that she views as of real importance come up: “Sex,” she says, waving her cigarette. Then she smiles and lifts her pierced left eyebrow, adorned with a tiny gold hoop. “Money. Gotta make money.”

Her feelings are shared in other parts of Queens. “I don’t want to know anything about the Pentagon, the White House, politicians. Social Security is pennies. You can’t live on that,” says Bill Nicholson, 60, a hot dog vendor, playing the Greek card game bourloto with friends in the Astoria section. “You have to put your energy into owning your own business, or when you’re old, you’ll end up eating one banana and one apple all day.”

He adds: “I would lose a day of work to vote. Who’s going to pay my money?”

Became Disillusioned

Some have tried putting faith in each major political party, first one, then the other, and grown disillusioned with both.

“They promise you a lot of things, but nothing changes,” says Edna Rivardo, shooing her grandchildren inside the row house in Jackson Heights where she’s lived for 40 years. “I was a Democrat, then I became a Republican.”

She hasn’t voted since 1980, well before she retired as a legal researcher for the state Supreme Court. “As far as politicians go, I just don’t trust them now.”

Such sentiments illuminate the “overall problem,” says Ruy Teixeira, author of “The Disappearing American Voter,” published in 1992. “For both activists and non-activists alike, politics is becoming less attractive.”

“Not voting is a symptom, not a disease. I don’t blame the citizen,” says Curtis Gans, director of the American Electorate research group.

But he worries about the result, contending that low turnout paves the way for the most militant to wield proportionately greater influence. “Public policy becomes increasingly polarized,” he says.

Steve Bennett, a University of Cincinnati political scientist, agrees. Though his studies show that a 99% turnout would not have changed the outcome of any presidential election since 1972, he says that the connection politicians have to the electorate have weaken as voting figures ebb.

In New York City, the politicos call areas like the 7th Congressional District “empty-calorie districts.” A region with few voters can have advantages for a candidate. The race is much easier and cheaper, for there are not so many people to mail to, telephone or otherwise persuade to take your side.

But “it cuts both ways,” says John Sabini, a 38-year-old New York City councilman from the borough. “Say I want to run for higher office against another councilman. He’ll have a bigger base.”

He also anguishes over how to do his job. “It’s like leading an army,” Sabini says, “without the troops.

“You gotta represent the voters. I want to get reelected,” he says. But there are times when those who trouble themselves to vote and non-voters “don’t necessarily have uniform interests,’ he adds. He wants to work on behalf of all his constituents.

He found himself recently scolding members of a block club that had invited him to speak. He had checked the voter rolls before heading over to the meeting. Of roughly 100 adults on the street, only six were registered.

His council colleague, Walter McCaffrey, has had similar experiences. At a college lecture, he asked students to raise their hands if they were registered to vote. Only a few arms went up. McCaffrey asked the people who were registered to sit together and thereafter addressed only them.

“The others got kind of irritated,” he recalls, “but I made my point.”

Turnout Pushed

Government officials have tried to spur voter turnout on a wider scale. The federal “motor voter” law that allows voter registration at state motor vehicle department offices makes it more convenient to get on the rolls. During the last five years, all sorts of efforts have been launched to get the registered to exercise their franchise.

On Capitol Hill, Sens. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), and Rep. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) tried in 1992 to get November election days in even-numbered years designated “Democracy Day.” They hoped it would encourage Americans to vote. The bill died in committee.

In Kentucky, the state has decided to post at public libraries the names of all who voted in the most recent election. In Pierce County, Fla., the county auditor conducted an experimental all-mail primary election in September. More than 37% of the registered actually filled out their ballots--far higher than the 14% who voted in the last off-year primary, but far lower than the hoped-for 60% to 70%.

For today’s City Council and school bond elections in San Ramon, a city of 50,000 east of Oakland, the local chamber of commerce organized 15 merchants to offer discounts--on everything from hams to oil changes to spinal adjustments--to anyone who shows a ballot stub.

But back in Queens, Musharaf Hussain says such measures are fruitless. “The first thing to do is change the election campaign finance laws,” he says. “You don’t have a voice from the beginning in the selection of a candidate now. If you don’t have money, there’s no way in hell you can run.”

In fact, even some non-voters contribute money when they really want to make a political point. David Wexler, who lives outside Queens on suburban Long Island, voted for Democrat Adlai E. Stevenson for President in the 1950s and for Republican Ronald Reagan in the 1980s--but for no one in between and no one since. “Technology drives society, not politicians,” he says. Still, as president of Tourneau Watch Co., “I’ve been in a position to make contributions, and I have,” he says.

Boldikis Apostolos, a carpenter in a gold embroidered shirt, gave $200 to Michael S. Dukakis’ Democratic campaign for President--he comes from the same town in Greece as Dukakis’ mother--and another $100 to Bill Clinton--because of Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos. Yet, though he has been eligible for U.S. citizenship for four years, he has not applied. Voting was required by law in Greece. Here, “it hasn’t been important,” he says.

Apostolos, 37, figures the candidates he favored probably were more grateful for his financial help than they would have been for his ballot.

“Well, that’s true,” says AlQaisi, who worked for several years as secretary to a California congressman and on Democratic campaigns in the Bay Area before returning to her native Queens two years ago. “Whatever money you donate, believe me, the politician knows.”

She voted in California, but when she and her husband, an Iraqi-born American citizen, moved to New York to be near her family, both of them stopped.

“I was concerned with big things,” she says. “Now I’ve turned back into mom, driving the car, [and] I realized all the little things nobody takes care of.” She was noticing potholes, long delays in road construction, troubled schools. She began to think that if government could not make progress on those fronts, “there’s not a lot they can do about other, more complicated issues.”

Across the country, the 1996 election appears to hold no more allure than previous contests. In a national Los Angeles Times poll conducted Oct. 27-30, only 32% of those who were not registered said they would make certain they were eligible to vote a year from now.

Even registration is no guarantee of voting. Of those polled who did not vote in 1992, only 5% said it was because they were not registered. The two most common reasons, each given by 21% of respondents, were being too busy and not liking the candidates.

Non-voters tend not to advertise their non-participation--perhaps out of embarrassment, perhaps out of fear of provoking anger and derision.

Sometimes, however, even the scornful have to back off. Edna Rivardo’s three closest women friends “were on my neck” for years because she did not vote. Now, though all of them are non-voters as well.

Ingrid Blanco, listening to Sylvie, the French immigrant, explain why she has no interest in voting, initially turns caustic. “No offense, but I personally think that’s stupid,” Blanco says. “You have no right to complain about this country if you don’t try to change it.”

Then she suddenly stops short. She has remembered that her mother, who lives in upstate New York, has never voted at all.

Pasternak reported from New York, Decker from Los Angeles.

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Too Busy to Vote?

Why do people who are registered not vote, and why do others not even bother to add their names to the voting rolls? A recent Los Angeles Times Poll found that in both cases, “just too busy” was a predominant response. Overall, roughly one fifth of those responding to the survey said they were not registered to vote.

Asked of registered voters who didn’t vote in the 1992 presidential election

What are the main reasons why you didn’t vote?

Just too busy: 21%

Didn’t like any of the candidates: 21%

Prevented due to illness: 8%

Away from home: 8%

Haven’t lived here long enough: 7%

*

Asked of respondents who are not registered to vote

What are the main reasons why you are not registered to vote?

I was just too busy to register: 23%

I haven’t lived here long enough: 22%

We get the same government whether we vote or not: 13%

I’m not all that interested in politics: 11%

Didn’t like any of the candidate: 8%

*

Asked of respondents who are not registered to vote

When it comes time to register to vote next year for the general election on Nov. 5. . .

I know I won’t register: 19%

I may register, but I doubt it: 8%

I may register or I may not: 21%

I’m pretty sure I will register: 19%

I know I will register: 32%

Don’t know: 1%

Since 1960, turnout in presidential and off-year congressional elections has been marked by a fairly consistent decline. Increases occurred in the 1992 and 1994 votes, but experts in the field see those upturns as exceptions to the overall downward trend.

Note: In 1994, the voting-age population was 193,650,000. Total voting was 75,114,722.

Sources: Committee for the Study of the American Electorate

L.A. Times Poll Oct. 27-30 of 1,426 adults nationwide including 1,190 registered voters. Margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3, percentage points.

Note: Some of the numbers do not add up to 100% because two replies were permitted and not all answer categories are shown.

About This Series

What’s on the mind of Americans one year before the presidential election? In this series, The Times takes a detailed look at the attitudes and anxieties--as well as the alienation--that can be expected to shape the 1996 campaign.

* Sunday: The Times Poll probed the views of more than 1,400 citizens from across the country on a range of political, social and economic issues.

* Monday: Extensive interviews in the city of Lompoc in California’s central coastal region offered a glimpse of the type of concerns voters will expect candidates to address.

* Today: More so than most democracies, U.S. elections are marked by non-participation. Who are those who have given up on voting, and why?