ABSTRACT
The cost of modern elections, too, concerns many citizens. Senator Nancy Kassebaum, co-chair of the Committee on the Constitutional System, notes that fund-raising for campaigns is “one of the most deadening and demeaning requirements of public office.” The heralded “debates” between candidates promise a more revealing glimpse of their views and personalities, but by the time their handlers have finished setting the ground rules, any opportunity for true spontaneity has been reduced to a minimum. Turnout for the 1988 presidential election was the lowest since the elections of 1920 and 1924. In those earlier contests, the ranks of non-voters had been suddenly swelled by the addition of women, whose right to vote had just been guaranteed by the Nineteenth Amendment. In the presential election of 1988, only about 50 percent of Americans old enough to vote cast ballots. Turnout for off-year congressional elections is even lower: about 39 percent in 1982 and 1986.
