The votes that could make a difference

If every registered Democrat was asked to bring one person who had never voted before to the polls, would that change the number of red v. blue states come November?

Bob Herbert, in his op-ed piece this morning, writes a heartbreakingly vivid picture of elections in a place like South Carolina. He comments:

South Carolina is a state with plenty of poor people. The Bush recovery went right by the Palmetto State without even stopping to wave. "It's like a depression down here," said Wilbur Collins, an unemployed factory worker. "The plants are closing so fast, the workers don't have no place to go."
Parts of South Carolina are economic wastelands. The jobless rate in some counties is approaching 20 percent. The median income for blacks, statewide, is less than $15,000, and for whites, less than $30,000.
The anxiety over the absence of work is pervasive, and in some cases heartbreaking. At a forum attended by all of the Democratic presidential candidates except Joseph Lieberman, a woman named Elaine Johnson told Senator John Edwards about her son, Darius. She said she gave Darius three choices: go to college, get a job or join the military. He tried college, but that didn't work out. "He wasn't ready for college," his mother said. He couldn't find a job. So he joined the Army and was killed in Iraq.

I was listening to the community forum attended by the candidates. Afterwards, off camera, some were asked what they thought of the contenders. There seemed to be the feeling that nothing would change much for the poor of S.Carolina no matter who was on the Democratic ticket. One woman said: “now Bill Clinton, there’s our man – he really understood poor people.”

Though it’s hard to forgive Clinton for the great welfare sell-out, I can see their point. All the candidates made a lot of physical contact with the audience – there were hands empathetically touching arms, hugs, that kind of thing. But you had to wonder how many will remember the forum once next November comes and goes. That, of course, is the cynical voice that keeps voters at home on election day.

The silent voice of poverty is, I think, the one troubling aspect of a political democracy. Still, Herbert remains guardedly optimistic:

The idea is to make low-income voters a force too strong to be ignored. A recent study commissioned by the center showed that small increases in voting by low-income people could be decisive in several strategically important states.
Most Americans are unaware of the extent of the suffering that has fallen on the bottom 20 percent or so of the population. Many low-income Americans are leading lives of grim and sometimes painful determination, struggling to survive from one day to the next. The contrast between the real lives of families sinking beneath the weight of economic distress and the headlines that continue to insist that the economy is doing famously is extraordinary.

To bring out the vote.. there is no reason why in November, S.Carolina should appear blue on the political map. If it does, we wont need to wait for post-election analyses; we’ll know that once again we’ve failed to convince enough people that there is purchasing power in a vote, with a higher probability of cash value than a lottery ticket. The affluent, disproportionately showing up at the polls, have known this for years.