Adele M. Stan is a regular contributor to IntellectualCapital.com. She is the Washington correspondent for Working Woman magazine.

"Has the ward captain been to see you, yet?" my mother asked me shortly after I moved back to Hudson County, N.J., the county of my birth in the New York suburbs.

The machine politics of Hudson County in general, and Jersey City in particular, were exceeded in infamy only by those of Boston and Chicago. In each locale, the Democratic Party ruled exclusively via a tightly organized voter-turnout strategy. When my mother moved to Jersey City in the 1950s, votes were not yet taken for granted as they are now, even by the party that enjoyed virtual hegemony over the county. She was still unpacking her boxes, as she tells it, when the ward captain turned up at her door to register her to vote.

In the 1980s, when I settled in Weehawken, a small, urban burg on Jersey City's northern border, Democratic politicians were running unopposed in local elections, obliterating the need for the voter-turnout efforts. No ward captain ever visited to register me to vote. In a town populated by the working class, the message was clear: "We don't need you or your stinkin' votes."

Jersey City nation

Across the nation today, the Jersey City model pretty much prevails. Oh, the candidates may face opposition from the other parties in statewide elections, but one party dominates many states, and the general populace sees little role for itself in the electoral drama. On the national level, the picture improves only slightly. Leaders of the two major parties compete for votes but do not appear alarmed by the precipitous drop in voter turnout the last three decades.

In presidential elections, turnout has dropped from nearly 70% of the voting-age population in 1964 to only 54% in 1996, according to figures compiled from U.S. Census reports by the Eagleton Institute of Politics. Turnout in non-presidential elections -- always lower than in nationwide contests -- has followed suit, with a 10% drop between the years 1966 and 1994, or a mere 44% of the voting-age population reporting having voted.

Everybody acknowledges that our current political system is broken. Unfortunately, campaign-finance reform, the catch-all fix-it scheme suggested by both parties, offers little hope of re-engaging Americans in determining their own destiny through electoral means. The political funding system does need reform. But it is just one of many issues that need addressing to return our nation to a vital political life.

Special interests always have had an undue influence on politics. But once upon a time, they understood that politicians had to be free to serve constituents to remain useful to donors. In the early part of this century, for example, the municipal government of Jersey City was notoriously corrupt, but regime after regime won because, as my grandfather explained it, "they knew how to take care of the people." With the involvement of an ever-dwindling number of ordinary people in the electoral process, the compact outlived its usefulness.

One factor may be an increasingly transient population. In a 1996 survey, results showed that respondents who had lived in a locality for less than two years were the least likely to vote. The breakdown in community as more Americans commute to cities for work only contributes to the problem; politics are less localized than in the past.

People must feel necessary before they return to the polls

People must feel necessary before they return to the polls. A good part of our electoral breakdown occurs in the primary process, which attracts only the most energized voters -- ideologues and extremists. The parties do not devote much energy to attracting more garden-variety voters, and in the 2000 presidential election, primaries conducted after mid-March, after many major state primaries are over, will be pretty much useless anyway.

Plenty of reason to be disenchanted

Meanwhile, the professionalism of campaigns has all but precluded meaningful participation by everyday people. Who needs an army of envelope-lickers when some faceless direct-mail house is handling solicitations?

Then there are the media. While media report campaign strategies, the public may conclude that the issues at stake are few and meaningless at that. The color of Al Gore's suit takes precedence over where he stands on encouraging businesses to create a livable workplace.

The general trust factor also is at play. Pundits and politicians trade snipes at each other on this one, but nobody discusses what Americans have seen in their political lives. Once you take that into account, you would have to conclude that the average American would be crazy to trust anyone connected with government.

Let's examine the precipitous voter decline from 1964 to 1996. Between 1963 and 1968, this nation witnessed three landscape-altering political assassinations -- of President John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert and of Martin Luther King Jr. -- none of which have been explained adequately, according to measures of public opinion. Significant pluralities of the population have doubts about the lone-assailant explanations of the murders.

During the Vietnam War, furthermore, the numbers of casualties were deliberately misreported. And don't forget Watergate (which was about the illegal manipulation of the electoral process); the Iran-Contra mess (which was about the government's circumvention of law); the U.S. role in bringing criminal dictator Augusto Pinochet to power in Chile by deposing a democratically elected regime; and the 1996 Clinton fund-raising scandal.

In the 2000 presidential election, and in countless races around the country, the stakes are extremely high, though you would never know that by what the candidates are saying or what most journalists are reporting. Legalized abortion, for instance, could end with the retirement of just one Supreme Court justice. The next president may get to nominate as many as three.

Social Security is still a mess, with a record number of retirees projected for the next 10 years and not enough money to distribute. Forty-five million Americans have no health insurance despite the government's assessment that we are all fully employed. The stock market is becoming volatile, and much of the social safety net has been dismantled. Women still earn only 70 cents on every dollar that men make. The information gap between the wealthy and poor is increasing.

If politicians spoke to the realities of people's lives, they'd return to the polls

However, if a single politician began speaking to the realities of people's lives, it is quite possible that people might begin to return to the polls. While politicians extol the virtues of a booming economy, a United Nations study finds that Americans put in more time at work than the people of any other industrialized nation do. So do we win the productivity war? Sure, but at an extremely high cost. The U.N. study finds that U.S. productivity indexes are only slightly higher than those of the French, who work a 35-hour week and take six weeks per year of paid vacation. Surely the American economy could afford to give its workers a bit of break, but do you hear any politician saying that?

A plan to re-energize the American voter

For starters, voters should be given a break Election Day. Having people work on Election Day sends the message that the needs of the workplace come before the needs of the nation. And we wonder why the national fabric has become so frayed.

Some propose moving Election Day to a Saturday. But this alone would not fix the problem of voter disinterest. In order to bring people back to the polls, the people need to have a stake in choosing the candidates who compete in general elections.

Therefore, I propose that government create a well-funded initiative, to be run by a non-partisan public-interest group (such as the League of Women Voters), to encourage turnout in primaries. States should give employees the day off and offer incentives to businesses to do the same. Likewise, local bodies charged with registering citizens should stay open outside normal working hours -- and municipalities that make no such provision should be made ineligible for the state and federal block grants most crucial to them.

The broadcast media, too, should be held responsible. In addition to providing free airtime to candidates, they should be required to provide free time to public-service announcements that encourage voter turnout. And I am not talking about lip-service announcements that simply instruct people to vote. I am proposing that broadcast outlets be required to run announcements that contain hard information about how to register and the location of polling places.

None of this will happen, however, unless those who still vote begin to demand it. The Internet offers opportunities to pressure politicians that have never before existed. Do yourself a favor: Send your comments to your lawmakers. If you are short on time, send them the link to this piece. The future of our republic ultimately depends on you.