Why Americans Don't Vote.

• Author: Gans, Curtis B.

Why Americans Don't Vote. Frances Fox Piven, Richard A. Cloward. Pantheon, $19.95. In 1963, President John F. Kennedy established a commission to recommend ways to enhance voter participation. Its findings, reported shortly after his untimely death, urged among other things: the abolition of poll taxes and literacy tests; the enfranchisement of blacks and 18- to 20-year-old youths; a shortened period between the close of registration and election day; mail registration; bilingual ballots; and various voter outreach programs. With one inconsequential exception, all of the commission's 18 recommendations have been adopted in whole or in part. Yet over the past 25 years, voter turnout has declined by nearly 20 percent in presidential elections-and more than 20 percent in mid-term elections-so that the United States now has the lowest rate of voter participation of any democracy in the world.

Enter Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward, arguing that the principal obstacles to enhanced voter turnout and to the mobilization of the American underclass are registration laws and administrative procedures. This assertion flies in the face of:

*Data that shows that in North Dakota, which has no registration barriers because it has no personal registration, the decline in voter participation in the last decade has been substantially greater than that of the nation as a whole, and that in Wisconsin and Minnesota, after an initial surge in voter participation following the adoption of election day registration in those states, voter participation has been declining more steeply than in the rest of the nation.

*Election results that show a sharp increase in turnout in 1982 (as compared to 1978), despite no increase in registration, and a sharp decrease in turnout in 1986 (as compared to 1982), despite a sharp increase in registration.

Something about this book reminds one of the sign"My mind is made up, don't confuse me with the facts." None of this is to suggest that voting laws and procedures do not pose obstacles for some citizens and should...