If you can get the Sierra Club to sign on, you have got yourself a moneyed, cutthroat lobby. Ditto the National Rifle Association. Letter-writing of a personal nature is potent and strangely neglected. Everybody who has ever given a nickel to anybody will receive a hundred solicitations from candidates, but not many will receive personal letters. Nobody ever knows what was the incremental inducement that led the incremental voter to the ballot box to vote for the victor.
Some societies seek democratic prestige by requiring every citizen to vote.
Most often, in the 20th century, this requirement has been coupled with giving the voters no real choice. Soviet democratic exercises regularly resulted in 98 percent for the Bolshevik candidate. In Mexico, until recent years, if you weren't nominated by the ruling PRI, you might as well not have bothered to run. Some Americans won't vote because, they say, there is no significant difference between Gore and Bush. Would you like to see them add this columnist to their newspaper.