ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, November 7, 1996 TAG: 9611070070
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
TURNOUT FELL below 50 percent for the first time since 1924, leaving election experts scratching their heads.
Helen Kalinski didn't feel like voting, but the 75-year-old grandmother went to the polls in Baltimore and cast a ho-hum ballot for President Clinton.
``If I don't, I'll feel guilty,'' Kalinski said.
The will to vote was not so strong for millions of other Americans.
Voter turnout in Tuesday's election was weak, the lowest since 1924 and possibly the thinnest since 1824, an elections expert says.
``Voter turnout is sharply down,'' said Curtis Gans, founder of the Committee for the Study of the American Electorate.
Incomplete results showed turnout dropped below 50 percent for the first time since 1924. If it was below 48.9 percent, Gans said, it would be the worst showing since 1824.
In Virginia, 46 percent of voting-age adults went to the polls.
The figures are based on the census count of all Americans, including citizens not registered but eligible to vote.
Fewer than 96 million Americans voted, and more than 90 million registered voters did not vote, Gans said.
Turnout was down in every state and the District of Columbia, but not every state had a lower voter showing than in 1988, which previously had the lowest voter turnout since 1924, Gans said. In 1992, turnout was 55 percent.
Americans are turned off by campaign attack ads, consultants telling candidates what to say and misaligned political parties - one party ``way to the right of the American center'' and the other ``following opinion polls,'' Gans said.
In South-Central Los Angeles, Elizabeth Richardson, 67, said she was upset about the negativity of this year's presidential campaign.
``I just hated that TV coverage, where they just smear each other,'' Richardson said.
Cynthia Barrett, a 28-year-old pediatric nurse from Charleston, W.Va., said she decided to vote partly to represent those who boycotted the polls because of negative campaigning.
``I don't want to know the bad stuff about people,'' she said. ``I just want to know what the issues are, and I want to hear what they have to say.''
Not all voters were nonchalant.
Charlotte Critser, 43, donned a stars-and-stripes blouse, American flag earrings, red shorts and navy tights to cast her ballot for Dole at Thrasher Elementary School in Signal Mountain, Tenn.
Andi Friedman, 20, spent hours helping to register voters at Tufts University in Medford, Mass., where campus Democrats etched ``Go Vote'' and ``Vote, Vote Today'' in colored chalk on campus walkways.
``There definitely is cynicism of government within this generation, but I don't know that it's all that different from generations before us,'' said Friedman.
She ignored her father's advice to ``Vote right - far right'' and cast her ballot for Clinton.
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