Checked out

Misty Starr, 21, says she’s registered to vote but probably won’t make it to the polls on Election Day.

The Spokane woman doesn’t own a car and it’s just too tough to get there, she says.

Plus, says Starr, “It’s not important enough to me because I’m sure Bush will get thrown out anyway.”

Spokane carpenter David Nicholson, 46, guesses he hasn’t voted in at least 20 years.

He’s turned off, he says, by politicians’ lack of action.

“I’m disgusted,” Nicholson says, sitting at an outdoor cafe in downtown Spokane. “If they want to get my vote, start doing something.”

Starr and Nicholson are in good company. In 2000, nearly half of all people 18 and older never cast a ballot in the presidential election, according to the Federal Election Commission. And about one quarter of registered voters never made it to the polls, the FEC says.

It’s hard to miss the fact that the 2004 presidential election’s just a little more than five weeks away. Walk past a newspaper rack. Turn on the TV. Doesn’t even have to be a news show. The candidates are popping up on entertainment programs, too.

Pay attention to any of that coverage and you know it’s a contentious, hard-fought race.

Some polls have George W. Bush and John Kerry in a dead heat.

But there will still be a large percentage of eligible voters who either never register to vote and many who register to vote but never follow through.

Why?

“There are so many different reasons,” says Jack Doppelt, an associate professor of journalism at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.

Doppelt should know. He studied nonvoters in the 1996 election for the book, “Nonvoters: America’s No-Shows” (which he co-wrote with colleague Ellen Shearer).

The two professors grouped nonvoters into several categories — Doers (educated, affluent, community-connected), Unpluggeds (disconnected from community, out of the political loop), Irritables (cynical about the process), Don’t Knows (don’t follow the news) and Alienateds (avoid political process in disgust). But many people who don’t vote share a similar sentiment about the political system, Doppelt says.

“The way candidates go about it pushes people out of the process,” he says. “There’s a fundamental disconnect. … Almost all politicians are really talking a language and using a kind of political speak that young people, people entering the political process and people that have been around for a while don’t connect with at all. That’s huge.”

Plus, the youngest generation of voters isn’t hard-wired to go to the polls like previous generations were, he says.

“The habit and ritual that the American public had 30 years ago no longer exists,” Doppelt says. “They don’t have the instinct that it’s part of what they do, it’s part of their ritual.”

For some, it’s cynicism that keeps them from the voting.

With the media talking about red states, blue states and swing states, some people believe their vote doesn’t count if they live in a state that is already tied up for the Democrats or Republicans, says Rusty Nelson, director of Spokane’s nonprofit Peace and Justice Action League.

“There’s the complete sense of disempowerment,” Nelson says. “They don’t really feel like their vote is going to count.”

And, of course, apathy plays a major role.

“Some voters don’t think it makes any difference who wins,” says Tony Stewart, a political science instructor at North Idaho College. “Things will just be the same.”

As Spokane County auditor, Vicky Dalton talks often with newly registered voters.

Sometimes, Dalton hears from felons who have completed the terms of their sentences and are finally getting their voting rights restored. Often, she hears from people who haven’t registered to vote because they don’t want to become part of the jury pool. (Jurors are chosen from among registered voters, but it’s not the only way to get on the list; drivers’ license records are also used.)

But, mostly, Dalton hears from people who say, “I just never got around to it,” she says.

“That, I’ve interpreted to mean, is that people don’t understand how to register to vote,” Dalton says.

There’s something different about the election of 2004, though. People are registering in droves this time around. Spokane County elections officials say they are receiving record numbers of applications.

Interest in voting often spikes during uneasy times, Stewart says.

“Voter turnout goes up in times of great crisis,” he says, citing the Great Depression and the conflict in Vietnam. “When we’re not at war, there’s prosperity, that really reduces the vote.”

Doppelt credits the increased interest to a growing “buzz” about this election. That doesn’t mean that people, particularly young people — a group chronically underrepresented at the polls, have developed a newfound interest in politics, he says. Rather, they’re simply plugged in to pop culture.

Michael Moore’s movie, “Fahrenheit 9/11,” adds to the buzz. The Bush daughters addressing the Republican convention adds to the buzz.

Comedy Central’s faux newscast, “The Daily Show,” adds to the buzz.

“I believe the buzz is intended to hit a crescendo in October,” Northwestern’s Doppelt says. “All of the signs seem to be congealing this year to make it really plausible that young people will vote this time.”

Donna Montgomery has made sure that her children have voted since the time they were able.

Montgomery, who lives in Hayden, Idaho, is the chairwoman of the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee.

She used to make her kids show her their “I Voted” stickers and would tell them, “You’ll be out of the will if you don’t vote.”

“It’s not just a privilege but a duty,” she says. “To me, it is. … People died fighting for our rights.

“I wish I knew the magic answer of how to get people to vote. Whatever it was, I’d do it.”