Historians have discerned an earlier party of nonvoters, persisting until the New Deal called it out of hiding. American voters are drawn disproportionately from the better educated, better off, and elderly. In contrast with electoral democracies elsewhere, the United States has failed to gain in equal proportions the participation of the less wealthy, the less educated, the young, and, most recently and curiously, the male. Indeed, the mini-electorate has its apologists, who ask what is wrong with having those who are most interested and best informed do the voting. This is not to imply that the problem is too vast and intractable to be addressed, but simply that it is too big for gimmicks.
Specific measures can help.
After all, federal legislation in the 1960s helped create the South's first black electorate since Reconstruction. Most of all, it appears, we need to rediscover what, if anything, politics is about or might be about. Which brings us to journalism. It is a given that mass communication provides most of the contact people have with candidates for major offices. And journalism supplies a good part of that contact but, what with the growth of candidate advertising on television, by no means all.