This story appeared in The Republic’s She magazine in October 2004.
OBJECTIVE
To educate and encourage single women to vote in the 2004 presidential election.
TEXT
In high school history and government classes young women are told it’s important to vote to make democracy work for them. Celebrities and MTV collaborate to register and remind young women to go to the polls.
Candidates and political parties recruit potential voters at county fairs. Despite efforts from these sources, 22 million single, divorced or widowed women who were eligible to vote in the 2000 presidential election did not. Sixteen million of those unmarried women went unregistered to vote, and the other 6 million were registered but didn’t cast their votes on Election Day, making this group the largest voluntarily disenfranchised demographic in the country.
Women’s Voices, Women Vote, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, was the first to discover this group’s potential impact in the upcoming 2004 election. Single women make up 24 percent of the U.S. population, giving them more power than the 6 percent of the population who are NASCAR dads. But why do so few single, divorced or widowed women make it to the polls on Election Day?
“I think that as a general rule, women do not see the benefits of voting and are not as well informed in the political arena,” said Jennifer Kleine, 24, of Columbus. “I am not sure as to why this is, but I think that this is definitely something that needs to be addressed.”
A national survey of 1,036 single women by Women’s Voices, Women Vote found similar conclusions.
No say
One of the main reasons unmarried women don’t vote is because they feel big corporations control politics and elections, so their votes don’t matter. Other reasons women on their own say they don’t vote are because politicians don’t listen to them and because politics and government are complicated and they don’t understand what is going on, the survey found. Chrissy Woszcynski, 18, a 2004 Columbus North High School graduate, said on the whole, her peers aren’t as apathetic to politics as some people think.
However, “young people are so worried about tomorrow’s math test and their date on Friday night,” Woszcynski said. “People get so caught up with the everyday stuff that they tend to put politics on the back burner.”
Chaley Leckron, 24, of Columbus, said many single women she knows don’t talk about the election and the political issues with others.
“Maybe they don’t have the push in their homes,” she said. “Maybe they don’t have anyone to talk about the issues.”
Kleine, who is single, did not vote in 2000 but plans to this year. “I felt that I was not well-enough educated on the candidates to make a well-informed decision,” she said. This year, she is doing her homework by reading newspapers, magazines and news Web sites. “I realize that none of these sources are 100 percent accurate, so by reading them all, I look for similarities in the information,” she said. “There is so much mudslinging that it is sometimes difficult to gauge what you can trust and what you can’t.”
Worth the effort
Although it’s hard work sifting through a pile of information every day, she feels it’s important. “I would like to know that my opinion was taken into consideration when the next president is elected,” said Kleine, who has not yet decided whom she is voting for in November.
Nancy Warren, a 75-year-old widow, agrees doing your homework is important. “I’ve never considered voting a huge effort. I’ve always considered it a real privilege,” she said. Perhaps many single, divorced or widowed women will continue to be disconnected from politics because of frustration with the last presidential election.
“I have a real concern since the last election was not fair or right or just,” said Warren, who has voted in every election that she’s been allowed. “We were so manipulated and that could easily be a cause for a lot of people to say, ‘Oh, what’s the use?’ which I think would be a greater tragedy,”
However, Pia O’Connor, Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. board member, disagrees. “Nationwide the trend of apathy may lessen because every vote counted (in 2000), assuming every vote was counted, which I think it was,” she said.
Early lessons
O’Connor, Bartholomew County’s only delegate to the Republican National Convention in August, grew up surrounded by politics. Since her great-grandfather was active in local and state politics and her parents were involved with the Republican Party, O’Connor has always been interested in the topic. She suggested that maybe the time it takes to vote was the reason so many single women did not make it to the polls in 2000.
Warren believes women on their own don’t vote because politics aren’t something most women talk about with their girlfriends.
“Politics is generally not a topic we discuss with each other and maybe we should,” Warren said. “People, especially women, tend to avoid topics of politics and religion because they think that should be personal. I have no problem saying what I think.”
Warren also thinks single women have a sense of powerlessness and have traditionally been overlooked by candidates and political parties.
Next steps
So how do political parties and candidates turn this information around and use it to their advantage? Pat Zeigler, chairwoman of the Bartholomew County Democratic Party, doesn’t have an easy answer. She says, “Until something affects you personally, you don’t become engaged.”
Instead of single women, she says, her party is going after young voters. At this year’s Bartholomew County 4-H Fair, she and other party leaders set up a booth in hopes of wooing younger voters. Lately, Democratic candidates have been canvassing new neighborhoods and registering people to vote.
“I’m interested in getting everyone to vote,” she said. “We need to appreciate how much we actually have. (Voting is) part of democracy.”
The Bartholomew County Republican Party also doesn’t seek a particular demographic.
“We try to appeal to everybody in all facets of life,” said Ted Ogle, party chairman. “We don’t have specific programs here at the local and county level geared to particular segments of society.”
The Bartholomew County Republican Party also registered voters at the fair. Ogle feels every citizen, including single women, should vote.
“This is a nation by the people, for the people and of the people,” Ogle said. “You have to take charge of your own destiny in this country. That’s what makes this country great.”
Attention from the top
Nationally, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry’s Web site has hosted Internet town meetings about what single women want. President Bush has launched a ‘W is for Women’ grass-roots campaign aimed at single women who have become more interested in safety since Sept. 11, 2001. However, unfortunately for Republicans, single women tend to vote Democratic. In fact, 66 percent of single women voted for Al Gore in 2000, compared to 30 percent who voted for Bush.
According to a June 8 Gallup survey, 56 percent of female likely voters supported Kerry vs. the 40 percent who backed Bush. Woszcynski, who plans to major in international affairs at the University of Evansville, is one single woman who plans to vote for Kerry in November. She says she disagrees with Bush’s foreign policy, claiming he has alienated the rest of the world.
“Gay marriage and the war in Iraq are two issues that I can get pretty heated about,” Woszcynski said.
The phenomenon of single women favoring Democrats has more to do with economics than feminism. According to the Women’s Voices, Women Vote survey, single women were most concerned with issues concerning health care, jobs, education and the economy. While many unmarried, divorced or single women vote for Democrats, other say they vote for individuals.
“I never fail to vote,” Warren said. “But I don’t always vote for one particular party. I vote for the person because I believe no party can be right all the time just as I believe no party can be wrong all the time.”
To get more single women interested in politics, Kleine suggests political parties and their candidates publicize when and where single women can register to vote. She also thinks that publishing political stories in mainstream magazines such as Cosmopolitan would help educate more single women about election issues.
“I don’t ever see a story on why you should vote in Cosmo,” she said. “That is not necessarily the magazine that I read, but if you look at it from a statistical and fairly logical standpoint, politics is a topic that is grossly under-promoted in this type of arena.”
Another way to introduce young voters to politics is through high school government classes, she says.
“They could do a lot more with showing high-schoolers why it is important to vote, how to vote, accurate resources for establishing an opinion, etc.,” Kleine said.
Whether or not single women decide to vote in the 2004 presidential election, they will have influence on the outcome because of their sheer numbers.
“I don’t think we can afford to be lazy and indifferent, especially in this election,” Warren said. “I think every eligible person should vote in the upcoming election.”
Amberly Peterson 