hy is voting like dieting or not smoking?
Because the people who need it most don't do it.
The older, richer, whiter, and better-educated you are, the more you vote. So these types of folks carry more weight in elections and in politics and therefore get more in government-granted goodies like tax breaks or hidden subsidies than do the younger, poorer, darker-hued or less-well-educated folk. You may have heard the tune: ''Them that has, gets.'' Got it?
Our voting patterns are pretty dismal, the further down the age and income and education scales you go. But voting ennui can seep upward, too. In the recent Massachusetts state primary elections, with no contests to speak of except an occasional state rep's fight or local punchup, only about 1 voter in 12 even bothered, and one polling precinct had ZERO voters.
If you don't vote, you don't count. Simple as that. And to get more people in the habit, Kids Voting Massachusetts is going the biblical route, as in: ''A little child shall lead them.'' And maybe the teenagers will lead them, too.
A hoped-for 1,000 volunteers in Boston, Quincy, Springfield, and the towns of Plymouth, Randolph, Stoughton, Richmond, Brewster, Chatham, Eastham, Orleans, Truro, and Wellfleet will show up on Nov. 7 (that's Election Day - mark it on your calendar, RIGHT NOW!) and create a parallel universe of polling stations. The idea is to have thousands of school kids in those communities that signed up show up to vote - and bring their relatives with them.
The aim is to increase voting by 5 or 10 percent in those communities that participate. In Boston, with 63,000 children in public schools, the ambitious goal is to have 10,000 of them show up at the polls, and vote on the sample ballot set up in adjacent Kids Voting booths.
The kids get to choose among six presidential candidates, and one of three Senate candidates (Carla Howell, Ted Kennedy, Jack E. Robinson), plus four of the state ballot questions. (The K-3 grades will vote only for president). These kid votes will be tallied and publicized the same way real election results get reported.
Hopefully, lots of parents who were thinking of skipping the election will get dragged along by the kids, and the kids in turn will be more interested and less intimidated by the process down the road.
The scheme was dreamed up in Arizona by businessmen who visited Costa Rica during an election there and were stunned to see 90 percent of the citizenry voting.
We had less than 50 percent of those old enough to vote in the last presidential election show up to do so. Two years ago, it was around 30 percent, and last month in Massachusetts, it was a cheesy 8 percent.
But when Kids Voting was launched in Quincy five years ago with a big push from Bill Ketter, then editor of the Quincy Patriot Ledger, 5,000 kids voted, and turnout jumped.
Overall, young people are the least likely to vote. People over 60 are twice as likely to vote as people under 30. So the politicians, surprise, surprise, pay more attention to the old than the young. Why? The squeaky wheel gets the grease.
Betsy Webb of Plymouth is the state coordinator of Kids Vote (617-929-7061). Volunteers are being coordinated by Ruth Feldman at City Year Boston (617-927-2537). Call her to sign up.
Corporate sponsors include Sovereign Bank New England, Stop & Shop, and the Globe. Working to coordinate the schools in Boston are retired school principals Phil Matthews of the James Otis School and John Gillis of the Dante Alighieri School.
Ketter, who now runs the Journalism Department at Boston University, says he got involved in order to try to reverse the downward spiral of voting. ''The aim is to get more adults voting now and more young people voting later.''
A lot of people don't understand the connection between voting and getting money for their own neighborhoods. The two sections of the city of Boston with the highest voting percentages are South Boston and West Roxbury.
A lot of other neighborhoods were outraged when they saw the deal that South Boston politicians rammed through for their neighborhood in terms of waterfront development gravy. Why did that happen? Because they vote heavily in Wards 6 and 7.
Same for West Roxbury, where a lot of current and retired city employees live. Ever wonder why the City Council caves in so often on municipal pay raises and pension bennies? Because they vote out there in West Roxbury.
So if you want more juice for your neighborhood, take your kids to vote at the special polling places after school on Nov. 7, and go vote yourself. Why bother? Because they system works - for anyone who knows how to work the system.
David Nyhan is a Globe columnist.
