LOTS OF NEW VOTERS, BUT WILL THEY VOTE?

It has never been all that difficult to become a registered voter in Missouri. Anyone genuinely interested in becoming a participant in the balloting process simply had to go to a voter registration office and sign a form. In many instances, registration opportunities were made available at shopping malls and at special community events. On occasion voter registrars would set up shop at other special locations to make the sign-up process as convenient as possible.

But that wasn't good enough for some do-gooders in Washington who passed the National Voter Registration Act, which mandates that states must make voter registration available at driver's license bureaus, welfare offices and other agencies. Missouri complied with what is commonly known as the motor-voter movement by passing a state law in 1993.

Now supporters of the movement are swelling with pride. They point to the latest registration results that show Missouri is a national leader in signing up new voters. In the first six months of this year, 155,000 new Missouri voters were added to the rolls, the third-largest gain in the country after Alaska and the District of Columbia. Of the total, 120,000 were at the new registration sites.

It is easy to claim some sort of success with these numbers. Clearly the motor-voter bill has produced results when it comes to issuing voter-registration cards. But a key question remains, as asked by the county clerk in Buchanan County in Northwest Missouri: Will they the newly registered voters bother to vote? Pat Conway, who also is president of the Missouri Association of County Clerks and Election Authorities, doesn't think so.

Those doubts are borne out by results here in Cape Girardeau and neighboring counties. In elections earlier this year, the number of votes cast by those who registered at the motor-voter locations was pitifully low -- in some cases only a handful out of hundreds that were signed up.

There continues to be a question whether some of the motor-voter registration sites make it clear that registering to vote is optional, not mandatory. There are stories out of some Missouri welfare offices of threats of withholding benefits until after registering to vote.

The ramifications of the motor-voter efforts remain to be seen. If the goal is simply to make some statistical gain in voter numbers, the effort is clearly working. But if the goal is to have greater participating in elections of informed and concerned voters, there is considerable doubt that the effort is working -- or ever will.