Voters in Illinois stayed away from the polls in record numbers Tuesday, providing the lowest turnout in an election year in the state’s history, officials said.
Using excuses ranging from work to apathy to just plain “What difference would it make?” voters shunned the polling places all over the Chicagoland area. Turnout was worse than many political “experts” predicted, and they had predicted a low turnout all along.
In Chicago, those who did not vote offered a variety of excuses, from being sure President Clinton would win to not finding time to register to vote.
“I know this sounds bad, but I just really don’t feel like it’s going to make any difference at all. I definitely feel Clinton is going to win,” said Kathy Veronie, 25, an insurance broker.
“I kept meaning to register and then I missed the deadline,” she said. “I might have been more motivated to register if Dole looked like he was going to win. Then again, when Bush was winning, I didn’t make a point of registering either.
“Voting doesn’t seem to change anything about my life,” Veronie said.
Matt Holzman, 40, production manager for Flair Communications Agency Inc., a Chicago-based promotional agency, said voting was just too inconvenient, and the election results too predictable.
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“I worked late,” said Holzman, a Rogers Park father of two who owns a home. “I think working justifies not voting.”
“We are having a record low turnout,” Holzman said, “so I think I’m close to the majority in not voting. . . . There’s also a little bit of voter apathy mixed in,” Holzman said. “I think it’s a foregone conclusion that Clinton is going to win.”
Predominantly Democratic Chicago, where elections traditionally have been as hotly contested as major sports events, broke its low turnout record for a presidential election year, worse even than in the previous worse year in 1988. Election officials were projecting the city vote at 61 percent.
Statewide, the numbers were better, but only slightly, with election officials expecting turnout to stay under 70 percent, less than the previous statewide record low of 74 percent in 1988.
The projected record lows came after an acrimonious presidential campaign that began with the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994; a bitter U.S. Senate campaign in Illinois between clearly defined ideological opposites and a desperate struggle between state Democrats and Republicans for control of the Illinois General Assembly.
But it also came after more than a year’s worth of negative television commercials and months of polling data pounding a message to the voters that they weren’t needed because Clinton had an all but insurmountable lead.
“I think the heavy polling had something to do with it. Even so, we’re at a record low,” said Ron Michaelson, executive director of the Illinois Board of Elections.
“If we break 70 percent, we’ll be lucky. But I don’t think that will happen,” said Michaelson.
“The voters have just turned off to negative campaigns. You could view it as apathy, or perhaps their passivity suggests that they’re not unhappy with the way things are,” Michaelson said.
Chicago’s record low turnout is the lowest in presidential elections since the 71 percent turnout of the 1988 campaign between Republican George Bush and Democrat Michael Dukakis.
What is perhaps even more significant, however, are the raw vote totals–871,000 projected votes–that Democrats count on to balance Republican votes from the suburbs and rural areas.
Only 1,428,795 people were registered in Chicago, another low for a presidential election.
“I think the voters were exhausted by all the political negativity,” said Michael Hamblet, chairman of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners.
“And low turnouts benefit those candidates with strong political organizations,” Hamblet said. “The Republicans are saying the Democratic voters didn’t come out, and the Democrats are saying the reverse.”
In the suburbs, the turnout was estimated at 63 percent by the office of Cook County Clerk David Orr.
Although Democrats were staying away from the polls in Chicago, the vote seemed more enthusiastic in the collar counties where there were contentious campaigns for the Illinois General Assembly.
In Lake County, Clerk Willard Helander predicted that about 80 percent of the county’s record high 297,863 registered voters would cast ballots.
In Will County, officials projected turnout would be between 65 percent and 70 percent.
By 2 p.m. in DuPage County, less than 40 percent of voters had gone to the polls. But votes in DuPage usually come in just before polls close.
The 1992 presidential race in DuPage brought 87 percent of county voters out to vote, but county election officials said they couldn’t tell if they were on track for such a turnout again.
Just east across the county line, in predominantly Republican Western Springs, a Democratic poll watcher didn’t see any decline in his precinct.
“We’ve already had 255 voters out of 473, and we’re not even in the evening rush,” said Pat Rogers, Lyons Township supervisor, outside the Forest Hills elementary school.
But, even in vote-starved Chicago, there was still some of the city’s legendary Election Day spark in some pockets of town.
On the South Side, Bob Harvey, 64, a Democratic poll watcher and longtime precinct worker with ties to former Mayor Eugene Sawyer, was watching over the 10th Precinct of the 20th Ward, where voters cast their ballots at a fire station at Marquette Road and Vernon Avenue.
He said his precinct was voting strongly against the GOP and House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the suburban Georgia Republican who has become a convenient demon for the Democrats.
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“You see all these older people coming out, they’re coming to vote against something,” he said, pointing to a line of eight people waiting to get to booths already filled with voters.
He noted one man on crutches. “There’s a saying in politics that if they come in on crutches, they are voting for a cause. We should have 60 percent, easy.”