ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, November 8, 1996 TAG: 9611080039
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-16 EDITION: METRO
IF YOU went to the polls Tuesday only to be deterred from voting by long, slow-moving lines, or simply found them an inconvenient delay, don't blame a presidential race so riveting that it attracted record numbers of voters.
Quite the reverse. Turnout was depressingly depressed all across the country - the lowest for a presidential election at least since 1924. Fewer than half of adult Virginians voted; despite population growth in the past four years, the number of Virginia presidential votes cast was down by more than 12 percent from 1992.
That's a disgrace. Even so, anecdotal evidence suggests some Virginians may have made it to the polls, then didn't have time for the wait required before they could cast their ballots. For that situation, you can blame Republican Attorney General James Gilmore and members of the Democrat-controlled Virginia General Assembly.
They're the folks responsible for putting on the ballot five proposed amendments - generally wordy, generally obscure - to the state constitution. The result: Slow voting, as Virginians tended to stay in the booths longer than usual, trying to figure out what they were voting on.
It's not that the amendments were in themselves godawful. We editorially recommended yes votes on four, and opposed one (the so-called victims'-rights amendment) precisely because it wouldn't do anything.
On the other hand, none of the amendments was crucial. Only two - one to better protect the assets of the retirement system for state employees, the other to align state voter-registration procedures with federal ones - addressed anything like a pressing problem.
Giving local prosecutors the right to appeal certain criminal-court rulings is an improvement, but (as with the victims' rights amendment) was made pressing only by Gilmore's need for issues on which to campaign next year for governor. Repeal of the constitution's ban on incorporated churches, the only amendment that failed to win voters' approval, was an effort to update an archaic provision but not a response to any immediate problem.
Continuous review of the state constitution for potential improvements is laudable. But in doing so, state lawmakers would do well to keep in mind the hapless voter. Limit the number of non-urgent proposals in any single election, and avoid entirely the boilerplate political amendments. There's no reason to add to the excuses, as poor as most of them are, for not voting.
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