Posted on 02/28/2007 4:55:19 AM PST by Chi-townChief
If political corruption scandals, two African-American sacrificial lambs, union activism, felons on the ballot, and Black History Month couldn't make it happen, then what would it take for Chicago area voters to show up at the polls in numbers that could be described in terms other than "disappointing" or "pathetic." Really, I need to know.
Because on Sunday, I'll be in Selma, Ala., watching presidential hopefuls praise the high and the lowly for the suffering they endured to get the Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed.
Barack Obama will deliver the keynote address at the historic Brown Chapel AME Church, the gathering place for 600 marchers who later crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Political jostling And Hillary Clinton, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and other political heavyweights are also expected to descend on Selma. The Selma-to-Montgomery march was actually the culmination of efforts throughout the South during 1963 and 1964 to register black voters.
On Sunday, politicians and civil rights leaders will trip over each other in the same way politicians jockey for the most visible positions at Chicago's annual St. Patrick's Day Parade.
Speakers attending Sunday's event will likely take turns talking about what happened when the marchers crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge and were met by 200 state troopers armed with tear gas, nightsticks and bullwhips.
Someone will remind the crowd -- and it will be a crowd, since every hotel in Selma is booked -- that marchers had to file a federal lawsuit in order to continue the march to Montgomery.
How quickly we forget Someone else will recall that only hours after that historic march, a 39-year-old white woman from Detroit -- Viola Liuzzo -- was shot and killed by members of the Ku Klux Klan. But on Tuesday, Selma might as well not have happened.
Because here in Chicago, where even old ladies in orthopedic shoes are among the throng of registrars eager to sign up voters, only about 32 percent of the 1.4 million registered bothered to cast a ballot.
Election officials are predicting that this was the lowest turnout for a municipal election in the city's history.
"Some of these polling places had 500 ballots, and 39 people turned out," said Tom Leach, a spokesman for the Chicago Board of Elections and someone who has watched these tallies for 34 years.
"If I had the secret to getting people out to vote, I would package it and distribute it.
"It's not only happening here, but all over the country," Leach said.
1983 turnout 82% Interest in voting goes in cycles, Leach told me. "Look back at 1983 at the race between Harold Washington and [Bernard] Epton," he said. "The election had an 82 percent turnout. It's the candidates and the issues that drive voters to get electrified. Voters have become complacent about politicians in general.
"My belief is that you can make voter registration as easy as can be, but if people don't want to register and don't want to vote, there's nothing we can do about it," Leach said.
That's true.
Yet when fewer people exercise their right to vote, then we are really no better off than when only a privileged few had the right to vote.
It's not likely that we will always be charmed by a candidate or charged up over an election.
Sometimes, the best any of us can do is our duty.
Unfortunately, too many of us failed on Tuesday to show respect for the ballot.
mailto:marym@suntimes.com
Chicago = QUAGMIRE !
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