Edward Shaw, 64; Tried to Lure Voters With Lottery Prizes

Edward S. “Eddie” Shaw, a promoter who once tried to entice lethargic California voters to the polls by offering $5 million in lottery prizes, has died. He was 64.

Shaw, who also produced scores of radio and television campaign commercials for Ronald Reagan, died April 7 of a stroke at his Otter Creek Mill Farm in Brogue, Pa.

“I’m a press agent. I always have been, and I always will be. Whether people want to label me a P.T. Barnum, what I want to do is to remind people to roll up their sleeves and vote,” Shaw told The Times in 1982, when he was setting up the lottery for California’s June primary that year.

Voters were asked to submit the ballot stubs they received after voting, with their names, addresses and phone numbers penciled on the back. About 700,000 did, and Shaw staged drawings to disburse the 70,000 prizes -- donated mostly by his clients of the day -- which included free vacations in Hawaii, a lifetime supply of French fries, lunch with television star Linda Evans, roller skates and socks.

The California secretary of state’s office said the lottery was legal because people were not receiving prizes for voting for a specific candidate or initiative. But the U.S. Department of Justice later decided that the lottery violated federal laws against vote buying -- specifically the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which states that anyone who “pays or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to vote or for voting” is guilty of a crime.

Unfazed, Shaw went off to Washington determined to stage a $100-million national election lottery for 1984.

But his efforts to legalize a federal election sweepstakes were for naught, and his “California gimmick” fizzled at the national level.

Congress may have been partly influenced by the fact that, even though lucky California voters did receive some prizes, the 1982 state primary voter turnout was not appreciably enhanced by the lottery. Shaw, however, contended that his prizes were specifically responsible for attracting 25% of the new voters in that election.

A native of Buffalo, N.Y., Shaw moved to Hollywood in his teens and had youth roles on such TV series as “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,” “Father Knows Best” and “Bachelor Father.”

He worked at CBS Television as a production assistant. After he formed his own Beverly Hills-based public relations firm, Edward Shaw & Associates, he served such corporate clients as the Disney and Paramount studios, Technicolor and General Motors, and actors including Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, Chuck Norris and TV talk show host Regis Philbin.

Shaw worked extensively for Reagan, producing campaign commercials for radio and TV plus special events, including inaugural balls

He is survived by his wife, Ruth Harris Shaw; two sons and two daughters from an earlier marriage; two stepchildren; four grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.