This activity will build upon the first participation project.

1. Students will interview the mentors in their respective participation experiences, asking them what laws or government funding decisions affect their organizations and/or causes.
2. Students will then put together grading reports of local candidates/officials on issues related to their particular participation project for voters to examine.
3. In the time of an active election, students can get involved in the reviewing of and teaching the electorate awareness of current ballot and voting rights and procedures.
4. Students may also want to participate in voter registration drives. Many churches and political groups participate as a group.

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Voter Participation: Why It Matters

Some observers take comfort in low-turnout elections. They claim that the country is better off if less interested and less knowledgeable citizens stay home on election day. In a 1 997 cover story in the Atlantic Monthly, Robert Kaplan wrote: "The last thing America needs is more voters—particularly badly educated and alienated ones—with a passion for politics." The gist of this age-old argument is that low turnout protects society from erratic or even dangerous shifts in power. However, America's voters have not acted whimsically. Except for an interlude in the 1 1780s, when the Articles of Confederation governed the United States, erratic voting has not been a persistent source of political instability.

On the other hand, a low participation rate is a problem. As the electorate has shrunk, it has become increasingly less representative of the public as a whole in its opinions. Polls indicate that even the outcomes of several recent elections would have changed if turnout had been substantially higher. And even if greater voter turnout would not have altered the outcomes, campaign platforms have always been tailored to those who do vote. As the political scientists Steve Rosenstone and Mark Hanson note in Mobilization, Participation, and Democracy in America (1993): "The idle go unheard: They do not speak up, define the agenda, frame the issues, or affect the choices leaders make."

Voting can strengthen democracy in other ways, too. When people vote, they are more attentive to politics and are better informed about issues affecting them. As the philosopher John Stuart Mill theorized a century ago voting also deepens community involvement. Studies indicate that voters participate more frequently in community affairs and are more likely to work with others on community projects. Of course, these associations say more about the type of person who votes than about the effect of voting. But recent evidence, as Harvard University's Robert Putnam notes in Bowling Alone (2000), "suggests that voting itself encourages volunteering and other forms of good citizenship."

Voting among young adults in particular has fallen off dramatically. When eighteen- to twenty-one-year-old citizens gained eligibility to vote in the 1972 election, nearly 50 percent of them voted. In 2000, only about 30 percent did so. Unless the turnout trend among young voters is reversed, the overall turnout rate will continue to fall, because the oldest generation, those who grew up during the Depression and World War II, participate at very high rates. Some analysts believe that the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001 will have the effect of renewing interest in politics and thereby in voting. The future of voting participation in America could well rest on whether that prediction is accurate.

Changes in registration laws have made it easier for students to vote if they choose to do so. Voting is not a time-consuming task, and the benefits to the individual and society are considerable. Have you registered yet?

From page 226 of Patterson's American Democracy 7^th edition

Internet Resources

Yahoo Guide to U.S. Elections
http://dir.yahoo.com/Government/U_S__Government/Politics/Elections/

Project VoteSmart
http://www.vote-smart.org/
Information on thousands of candidates and officials, plus many other political resources.

The Vanishing Voter Project
http://www.vanishingvoter.org/
A Project to Study and Invigorate the American Electoral Process

Federal Election Commission
http://www.fec.gov/

About Elections and Voting from Federal Election Commission
http://www.fec.gov/elections.html
A rich resource for general election information.

State of Michigan Election Guide
http://www.michigan.gov/sos/0,1607,7-127-1633---,00.html
Sample of the type of election information from state governments.

Searching for the Meaning of: The American Democracy
Connecting the text and classroom with first-hand experience

1		How informed is public opinion (see pgs. 185-187)?
2		What did the experience teach you about how Americans learn about their politics (pgs. 191-195)?
3		What did you learn about the connections between the different mechanisms of activism and the value of voter participation (see chapter 7)?
4		How do the institutions of political parties, interest groups, and the media (see chapters 8-10) interact in the electoral process?