To Some Voters, It Feels Like the First Time

As a girl, she was among the refugees we called “boat people.” Now she is a naturalized American citizen, a 23-year-old UCLA student who, during this academic year, is studying in Spain and steadily becoming trilingual.

A couple of weeks ago, this worldly young woman found the political news from home appalling. She wasn’t referring to the reelection of President Clinton or the passage of Proposition 209, the anti-affirmative-action initiative. She was talking about the fact that so many Americans didn’t even bother to vote. Less than half of the voting-age population cast ballots, the lowest turnout in 70 years.

Voting, she declared, should be mandatory.

It’ll never happen, I replied. Mandatory voting would be downright un-American.

It’s a right and a responsibility, she insisted. It should be a requirement.

Nope, I said. Too authoritarian. Besides, how would you enforce it? Would you fine nonvoters? And if they refused to pay, then what? Would you throw them in jail?

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Her proposal may be extreme, but it’s easy to understand her concern for what one headline writer called “America, the Apathetic.”

In 1992, 55% of America’s 189 million voting-age population showed up at the polls and of them, 43% gave Clinton the victory. He won with a plurality of a majority. This year, 49% of the 196.5 million voting-age population cast ballots, of whom about 49% voted for the incumbent. So he won with a plurality of a minority.

Only a serious Clinton hater could find comfort in that.

These numbers are a bit fuzzy. From my sources it’s not clear whether the voting-age population applies to citizens and noncitizens alike. It’s interesting, however, that America’s naturalized citizens are often more enthusiastic about voting than those of us who regard democracy as a birthright. Many come from countries where elections, if held at all, are far from free.

This was the phenomenon that Cecelia Barragan witnessed in Campaign ’96. Unlike my friend in Spain, Barragan found reason for encouragement at the polls. Nationwide, the participation may be down. But in her Pacoima neighborhood, Barragan said, “the lines were out the door.”

Barragan figures that she and her friends had something to do with that. She is a co-chair of Valley Organized in Community Efforts, or VOICE, a network of grass-root activists based in 11 churches and synagogues that has become a growing political force, especially in the East Valley.

VOICE, founded eight years ago, is a sister organization to similar church-based activist groups in East L.A., South-Central and the San Gabriel Valley.

VOICE started modestly, successfully pressuring City Hall to do a better job of removing abandoned cars from East Valley streets. But the divisive politics of Proposition 187--the popular 1994 measure that sought to deny illegal immigrants public health care and schooling for their children--helped put VOICE in the citizenship business. The organization has helped more than 3,000 immigrants become citizens, and earlier this year helped pressure federal officials to process a nationwide backlog of 300,000 citizenship applications before the election.

The group has also been busy with voter-registration drives and passing out absentee-ballot forms. With its sister organizations, it set a goal of rallying 96,000 new and occasional voters to the polls this year. (VOICE member Jay Goldberg says the four groups reached 90,000 people, 95% of whom are believed to have voted.)

At Mary Immaculate Church in Pacoima, Barragan found the activity heartening. It wasn’t surprising to meet immigrants from Mexico and Central America, but some came from Iran and Poland. Newly minted citizens comprised many of the two-member teams who went door-to-door to encourage people to vote--and to vote no on Proposition 209, one of the three ballot measures on which VOICE took a position.

As a nonprofit organization, VOICE doesn’t endorse candidates or parties, but it does tackle issues. Its citizenship and voter drives prompted complaints from some quarters about the separation of church and state, but Father Pat Murphy of Holy Rosary Church argues that it’s the church’s duty to be politically active.

“Jesus, I think, was always offering the moral point of view to people,” Murphy said. “As a church we have to do that or we have no reason for existing.” From the right, Pat Robertson may make the same point.

VOICE also got involved in a little pre-election skirmish with a group of similar name but very different perspective. Voices of Citizens Together, an organization that campaigned for Proposition 187, all but accused VOICE of promoting ballot fraud and threatened to stand 100 feet from polling places with signs declaring that only citizens may vote. VOICE in turn sent out volunteers with video cameras to record any voter intimidation. As it turned out, they found none.

Proposition 209, as expected, cruised to victory, but Barragan and other VOICE members still seem encouraged. The political organizing they performed this year, they say, will pay off for years to come.

So the group hosted a banquet at Mary Immaculate on Wednesday night to honor more than 200 people, many of them new Americans, who worked hard getting out the vote.

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No, I told the lady in Spain, you can’t force Americans to vote. But maybe, just maybe, they can be encouraged. Thinking out loud, we arrived at a $50 tax deduction for voters. (Sure, it’s really a hidden fine on nonvoters, but it was fun to talk about.)

Cecelia Barragan has another solution. VOICE did it the old-fashioned way, with organizing and plenty of shoe leather.

“Once people see that people are voting, and are coming out in numbers, maybe people will wake up. If nothing else, even to speak out against what we stand for.”

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to Harris at the Times Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth 91311. Please include a phone number.

It’s interesting that America’s naturalized citizens are often more enthusiastic about voting than those of us who regard democracy as a birthright.