WILL 70 MILLION SIT IT OUT?

Many forecasters are talking about an exceptionally low voter turnout, despite a razor-close race for the presidency that normally would draw more people to the polls. Why? TIME National Political Correspondent Robert Ajemian sent this report:

Field Coordinator Nick Nicholson was ready for trouble as he turned briskly into the Jimmy Carter storefront office in downtown Indianapolis last week. For months he had traveled around the country trying to sign up voters. It had been discouraging: only a few volunteers ever showed up, and there was rarely enough money for buttons and bumper stickers to soften up a sullen public.

Nicholson moved past the empty vending machines of what used to be Earl's Snack Shop into the back workroom and found exactly what he had feared: 25 of the bank of 30 telephones were unmanned. A cordial, soft-spoken man from a small town in Kentucky, Nicholson, 28, nonetheless knows how to use a stick when he has to. He jumped all over the local staff. His tongue was blunt, at times crude, and later he ruefully explained why he had acted that way. "It's damn frustrating out here," he said. "There's no spontaneity, no volunteer spirit. Even the party regulars are hard to turn out."

The public, as Nicholson sees it, has been little touched by the 1976 campaign. Carter's Atlanta vote director, David Brunell, likens it to the sound of one hand clapping. A Democratic National Committee official involved in the registration and get-out-the-vote drive says that in 16 years of precinct politics he has never seen so little public interest. With 150 million Americans of voting age, this year's registration is likely to total roughly 100 million, about even with 1972 despite the fact that some 9 million more voters became eligible.

It is not so much that the voters are apathetic as that they are emotionally drained, skeptical, even resentful of the caliber of the two candidates and the often petty campaign. Such is the level of disillusionment that more than 70 million Americans may stay at home next week. That would surely boost Gerald Ford's election chances, since the more affluent and older voters, who tend to vote Republican, will probably turn out. Says the highly regarded Washington pollster Peter Hart: "It's the best thing Ford has going for him, and he knows it." Ford staffers do not disagree. They are purposely running negative television ads--like the ones that feature fellow Georgians running down Carter's record as Governor--not to convert voters to the President but to undercut his opponent and depress the vote.

Political scientists are disturbed by the steady voter decline since 1960. "We're building a huge vacuum at the center of our political system," says Walter Dean Burnham of M.I.T. He compares our 1972 turnout of 55% with Sweden's 90% and West Germany's 91%. Says Burnham: "Low turnout leads to special-interest voting. A small disciplined group can swing an election." Pollster Hart, in a major study of nonvoters published last month, was alarmed to find that young voters are not moving into the political process. "They're like a lost generation that doesn't want to participate," says Hart. "Nonvoting is becoming the norm."

Not all observers are so pessimistic. Princeton Political Scientist Michael Kagay, who has studied voting trends, believes the turnout will actually be higher than four years ago because voters considered the 1972 election to be a foregone conclusion and therefore abstained. He predicts a 58% turnout. Most observers, however, concur with the Hart poll that the figure will be closer to 50%. Burnham's own estimate: a depressing 48.5%. "If Ford wins," says Burnham, "it will be because Democrats decided not to vote."

Turned-off voters have clearly become the No. 1 danger for Jimmy Carter and his staff. Everywhere Carter traveled last week he warned and pleaded with his audiences to be sure to vote. His top advisers, Charles Kirbo and Hamilton Jordan, put urgent calls out to party regulars across the country, seeking their help. It was an ironic turn, since until now the party organizations, weak as they are in most states, had virtually been bypassed. But now California Governor Jerry Brown was implored to travel the country and exhort the youth votes. Senator Edward Kennedy was asked to fly to California and elsewhere to help with Catholics and minorities. Even the ailing Hubert Humphrey was asked to make a last-minute emotional radio appeal from his New York hospital bed to persuade Democrats not to stay away from the polls.

Democratic mayors from cities such as Toledo and Buffalo were calling nervously last week for help. The traditional Democratic ethnic voters in their areas, the mayors said glumly, are not inclined to vote. The national party leadership is making a massive effort to spin that around. The AFL-CIO is mailing millions of pieces of literature--including tons of the buttons and stickers that are in such short supply in many places--to its union members, beseeching them to vote.

Democratic National Chairman Robert Strauss zeroed in on the turnout problem early and siphoned $1.9 million into voter registration and get-out-the-vote programs in 14 populous states. Says Strauss with some satisfaction: "It's turned out to be the second most important decision of the campaign." (The first, he says, was Carter's choice of Walter Mondale as his running mate.) The Republicans, on the other hand, have made no registration effort. They have identified their traditional voters and, with phone banks in every state, have been making thousands of calls to alert them to vote. Says Dick Thaxton, who directs the G.O.P. program: "The Democrats say it's cold out there with the voters. We think it's only chilly. Our vote is pretty steady."

Officials in both camps agree on one fact: neither Ford nor Carter has stirred this year's troubled voters. Professor Everett Ladd, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, believes if Adlai Stevenson and Dwight Eisenhower were running this year, the vote would be higher by at least 10%. Walter Burnham agrees. He contends that the two candidates have not been up to the country's thirst for leadership. He argues that the Democrats were in the best position by far to match that need, but Carter blew his natural advantage. Reaching back to Abraham Lincoln to make his point, Burnham said: "Lincoln also ran a campaign on trust and moral uplift. But he tied it to specific issues that people understood and rallied around. The issue was never Lincoln the man. In fact, Lincoln could never have won on personal glamor. Carter personalized his campaign around himself."

Yet it is that very personal Carter pitch that lifts fieldworkers like Nick Nicholson through the tough days. He views Carter as a public healer. When sour voters challenge him--and they often do--about Carter's fuzziness, he tells them that in the end it is a matter of character. "There's no doubt that voters are cynical," says Nicholson, "but underneath they want to believe so bad." Then he stopped and thought for a moment. "You know, I'm a cynical guy myself," he said, "and I want to believe so bad too."

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