That distance already seems too much for many Americans. Nationally, voter turnout has declined by almost 25 percent in the past three decades, RAND , the California think tank, reported recently. The report recommended that the federal government make E-mail available to everyone. Broad access to computers and electronic networks. . . Declining interest in politics is evident in Boulder, where only 38.6 percent of the city's 68,000-plus registered voters made it to the polls for last November's municipal elections.
Officials here try to put a brave face on the statistics.
But local activists argue that the citizens of Boulder and many other communities are staying away from the voting booth because they're convinced that lawmakers pay little attention to their views anyway. People are looking for alternatives, and one of those alternatives is direct democracy. The system would work much like automated voice mail. A voter taps a password of his or her own choosing into a computer database and is, in turn, assigned a random identification number that is too long for anybody else to guess. On Election Day, the voter calls a toll-free number and punches in the ID number on the telephone number pad.