Program determined to get teens to go to polls

Monday, Dec. 14, 1998 | 11:15 a.m.

Nevada had one of the lowest voter turnout rates in the nation for the 1996 presidential election, a dismal 39 percent, according to a spokesman for a national organization that promotes responsible citizenship.

"That's about as low as you can get," said Sandy Horwitt, director of a program called First Vote, which was created by the Close Up Foundation in the early 1990s to fight a troubling decline in voter turnout nationwide.

"In 1996, only 49 percent of the registered voters in this country went to the polls," Horwitt said. "That's the lowest since 1924."

Horwitt, whose organization is based in Alexandria, Va., was at Silverado High School recruiting Clark County School District social studies teachers for First Vote, which is aimed at registering eligible high school students to vote.

"Our motto is that every young person who leaves high school should have a diploma in one hand and a voter registration card in the other," Horwitt said.

Teachers and other representatives of 13 district high schools attended the First Vote workshop,

"We're really excited," Horwitt said. "The Clark County School District is one of the largest and fastest growing in the country.

"There's a great deal of enthusiasm for implementing the program."

Pat Painter, chairman of the Social Studies Department at Silverado, said teachers are constantly trying to persuade young people to become involved in the electoral process.

He said there has been a steady decline in voter turnout since the 1970s, when many people became cynical about politics because of the Vietnam War and Watergate, among other issues.

The cynicism of the adults seems to have filtered down to the children, Painter said.

Since First Vote was created, 3,400 high schools around the nation have added the program to their coursework in social studies.

About 100,000 eligible high school students have been added to the voter rolls in each of the past three years, according to Horwitt.

First Vote offers participating teachers a free 15-minute video and teacher resource guide stressing the importance of voting.

The material is presented in social studies classes, and students are urged to register in the classroom.

The classroom voter-registration program is targeting May 1, Law Day, for a massive registration push in the classroom. Since May 1 falls on a weekend, however, the actual day of the push will be one day in the week preceding.

Horwitt said the number of 18-year-olds who vote has been declining since they received the right in 1972.

In that first election, he said, 50 percent of those eligible voted. In 1996, only 29 percent did.

"That's a drop between 1972 and 1996 of 20 percentage points," he said.

Horwitt said he brought First Vote to Clark County not only because of its size and growth rate, but because the school district has been an active participant in Close Up Foundation events.

Each year, the foundation, which may be the nation's largest nonprofit, nonpartisan citizenship education organization, puts on a variety of programs in Washington, D.C., for more than 25,000 students, teachers and other adults.

The organization's stated goal is to provide programs that "strengthen participants' knowledge of how the political process works, increase their awareness of major national and international issues, and motivate them to become actively involved in the world around them."

While the Watergate hearings may have turned off a generation of voters, Painter says the impeachment hearings now under way have created some interest.

It remains to be seen what effect it will have on voter apathy, but at least, he said, it has been a education about the impeachment process.