In Mississippi, Deep-Rooted Doubt

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Mississippi: Will Voter Turnout Increase?

The small town of Canton, Miss. -- located approximately 150 miles from the site of Friday night's presidential debate -- has one of the lowest voter turnouts of greater Jackson, Miss. districts. Residents expect voter registration to increase this election cycle, although many have yet to register.

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Three washers away in the hot, busy laundromat, Robbie Savage, 37, put a load of clothes and seven quarters in a washing machine. Savage, who is white and voted for President Bush in 2004, said she hadn't bothered to change her voter registration from Alabama, where she lived four years ago.

"I don't think either of them know what's going on here," she said. "They need to come here and find out."

What's going on, Savage said, is her neighbor, who drove a backhoe for Nissan, was laid off two weeks ago. Her husband lost his logging job and had to work for less money laying pipe. Savage cleans homes and does landscaping for families in Madison, a wealthier community 25 minutes away. She heard the talk in Washington about lowering gas prices, but so far as she can tell, that's all it ended up as -- talk.

"When the politicians say they are going to do something, they need to do it and show the people," Savage said.

LaShayla Allen, 31, a preschool teacher, said she sees the malaise among young people, who in Canton have only a sparsely equipped Boys & Girls Club to occupy their time. With little else to do, they hang out in the streets.

"They don't really have hope to do better," she said. "Canton is all they see. . . . They see that their mother didn't graduate, so they don't graduate. My momma doesn't vote, so I'm not going to vote."

Allen said she will vote for Obama, but after watching the debate Friday night, she said neither candidate spoke to what concerns most folks in Canton, where gasoline cost $3.68 a gallon last week.

"I don't think they touched on what's happening with the economy now," she said. "When they get elected, what are some hands-on things they will do?"

After the first service at Greater Faith Calvary Pentecostal Church, Keith Warfield, a bail bondsman and associate minister, said that distrust of the political process has even seeped into the church pews. It is the reason his wife, LaTasha, refuses to vote.

"She believes they are going to do what's best for Washington, not what's best for the people. Most people are pretty much numb to politicians and their lies after being lied to so many times," said Warfield, who did not watch the first presidential debate but plans to vote for Obama. "I don't know if McCain or Obama can fix what's messed up now. A lot of issues, if God doesn't intervene, it can't be fixed."

That kind of pessimism is a long way from the sense of possibility many older residents remember feeling from the days of the civil rights movement, when Canton was a focus of the Mississippi Freedom Summer movement that inspired and registered thousands of black voters and got them to the polls.

Chinn, the Democratic Party chairman, maintains hope that blacks will return to that level of engagement. It is a long shot, he acknowledges, but it is possible with greatly increased black voter turnout and some support from whites to win Madison County for Obama. It requires rousing the unregistered voters in Canton in the next week and giving the registered ones a reason to trust again and turnout.

"You get a feeling every 300 or 400 years," Chinn said, "that you might get a blessing."