ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, February 6, 1996 TAG: 9602060044
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
PUNDITS WERE busy last week looking for national significance in Oregon's special election to fill the U.S. Senate seat of Republican Bob Packwood, who was forced to resign in disgrace. The Democratic candidate, Rep. Ron Wyden, won. Aha! Repudiation of the GOP's congressional agenda? A vote of confidence in President Clinton?
Probably neither. Oregon is a relatively liberal state; Wyden's margin of victory was thin.
Even so, the election was nationally significant - not for its outcome, but for its procedure. It was America's first statewide election conducted entirely by mail.
Close to two-thirds of Oregon's registered voters cast ballots. That marked an increase, though neither dramatic nor unexpected, in participation over normal nonpresidential elections. Turnout - well, actually, ``drop-in,'' since voters had only to drop their ballots into mailboxes - was significantly higher than usual, though, in the earlier by-mail primaries to choose the parties' nominees. And the couch-potato process saved the state $1 million.
Virginia should consider a similar experiment.
Turnout in the commonwealth has been inching up, topping 84 percent of registered voters in the 1992 presidential contest and 69 percent in the 1994 blowout between U.S. Sen. Charles Robb and GOP challenger Oliver North. Still, too many Virginians sit out elections. In 1994, for instance, the record turnout represented less than 42 percent of Virginia's voting-age population.
The so-called motor-voter law, making registration more convenient, seems sure to expand the electorate. An obvious next step might be to make voting itself more convenient - and we're still a ways from voting by home computer.
Traditionalists would miss going to the neighborhood school or fire station on Election Day, joining the ritual of democratic decision-making in community with other citizens who care about the course of self-government. We also have doubts about giving up this experience.
But an election such as Oregon's, where voters had 20 days to fill in their ballots and cast them with a 32-cent postage stamp, would remove just about all the hitches and excuses for not voting - except apathy.
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