"Register to vote?"

"Register to vote?"

"Register to vote?"

Ten workers from Baltimoreans United In Leadership Development -- BUILD -- have fanned across East Monument Street near Northeast Market, clipboards in hand, trying desperately to interest people in their civic rights.

Many of the shoppers and Johns Hopkins Hospital workers who clogged the sidewalks here at midday treated the yellow T-shirt-clad registrars as if they were solicitors or con men, out to make a buck. They shouldered past, eyes averted. Some muttered, often unconvincingly, that they were registered.

Others looked disgusted, as if they had smelled something particularly bad beneath the fried chicken aroma that dominated the area.

But -- sweet novelty -- every now and then, a person actually tugged a volunteer's arm and said, "Hey, could I register to vote?"

"You develop a tough skin after a while," organizer Scott Cooper said philosophically. "There's a lot of apathy, and there's a lot of anger."

Since June 1, BUILD volunteers tried daily to register city voters, hoping to have 6,000 signed up before the Aug. 16 cutoff.

With more than 4,000 registered, they say they are on schedule to meet that goal.

It is one of only a few comprehensive voter registration drives in the city this summer and more successful than all the city efforts combined last year, according to Cooper, who said 2,000 voters were added to the rolls last year.

Their efforts often put them in the path of unhappy voters, who treat the volunteers as sounding boards for their complaints. Anyone who wants to know the mood of the Baltimore voter should spend an afternoon on a corner with BUILD volunteers.

Last week, when volunteers returned to Northeast Market, one of their most successful sites, they encountered the usual mix of responses from potential voters.

Patricia Edwards, 32, who grew up in the neighborhood, was coaxing old friends, such as John Ham Jr., 34, an adamant nonvoter.

"You know you're like family to me, but I just won't do it," he said. Ham's reasoning works this way: U.S. Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, a 7th District Democrat, let him down when Ham appealed to the congressman's office for help to collect unemployment benefits from the state. So he has no use for politicians.

Did it ever occur to him that politicians might be more responsive to registered voters? he was asked.

"Sure," Ham conceded. But he just can't get excited about anyone in the 26-candidate field for mayor of Baltimore. "I do have a 'Draft Mfume' shirt, but that didn't happen. I don't care. I just don't care."

Edwards sighed. "A lot of people feel discouraged about voting," she said.

"I explain to them it's not a lost cause ," but she spotted another potential voter and sprinted off without finishing her thought.

Minutes later, she was dogging a man who said he couldn't vote -- he's a convicted felon. This is a common misconception in Baltimore. It takes two felony convictions to lose one's voting rights in Maryland. With one felony conviction, once the criminal has completed his or her sentence and parole, he or she is allowed to vote again.

"Are you sure?" the man said, squinting dubiously at Edwards. "Are you sure this isn't some scam? My mother did this last week, and someone ran up her long-distance bill."

Edwards said he could leave spaces for his Social Security number and phone number blank if providing the information made him uneasy. The only absolute requirements for the form are name, address and date of birth. The man decided to do that.

Across Monument Street, Johns Hopkins University graduate student David Snyder was on a roll.

A student of political theory, Snyder welcomes what he calls the "chance to make theory real." Indefatigable and apparently immune to insult, he persuaded 25 people to sign voters' cards. But he estimated it took almost 100 contacts to get those 25.

Linda Johnson, deep in thought, threw up her hands and yelled when Snyder approached her.

A few feet later, she met another BUILD registrar and regretted the way she had treated Snyder. Sheepishly, she backtracked and apologized.

"When I first passed him, I just had a lot of attitude," said Johnson, 42, who lives in Northwest Baltimore and cannot remember the last time she voted, although she knows she was registered at one point. "I thought he was selling something."

The BUILD workers make few assumptions about the people who pass them. They approach Hopkins workers on their lunch breaks, girls with babies who may or may not be old enough to vote and self-described "market rats" such as June Brown, 75, who argued with Cooper about the futility of it all.

"Ain't nobody running," he said. Informed that 27 people were vying to be mayor, he amended his statement. "Twenty-seven nobodies, and 26 of 'em, I ain't heard of before."

The field was further reduced Friday when one of the candidates was disqualified for failing to file a financial disclosure form.

Cooper, 26, pulled out what might be called the heavy weaponry of voter registration arguments: Didn't Brown realize that people died not that long ago for trying to exercise their constitutional right to vote?

"People always die," Brown replied.

It turned out he was a registered voter, although he insisted he voted only on bond proposals.

"No people. I won't vote for people," he said.

At the end of the two-hour sweep, BUILD had registered another 103 voters, one of its best days ever. A certain competition is encouraged among the workers, although Cooper doesn't want it to get too cutthroat. Several individuals have signed up more than 300 voters this summer.

A slightly less orthodox voter registration drive is under way in Baltimore this summer -- United for Progress, or UP, a coalition of those who provide services for the homeless, is registering homeless men and women at the city's soup kitchens, shelters and at Health Care for the Homeless.

Kevin Lindamood, who is coordinating the drive, said anyone who has a mailing address can be registered to vote. Those in transitional housing can use that address, and those who receive mail through Health Care for the Homeless or other agencies are allowed to use those addresses.

Peter Sabonis, executive director of the Homeless Persons Representation Project, conducted a precinct-by-precinct analysis of the 1995 Baltimore election results and calculated that homeless voters could have a profound impact on City Council races.

He likes to point to the example of the 1st District's Ward 5, Precinct 1, where 189 people voted in the 1995 primary. Maryland Center for Veterans Education and Training, a transitional shelter, has 250 beds, which gives it the theoretical potential to dominate that precinct.

Last week, 10 of the 17 candidates for 4th District council seats attended the first forum at Health Care for the Homeless, where clients were able to ask questions about the UP agenda, which includes affordable housing and universal health care.

"I really saw it as the beginning of a strategy involving the homeless electorally, rather than the means to an end," Sabonis said. "If we could get a couple of councilmanic candidates and put these issues on their radar screen we understand the council, vis-a-vis the mayor, is weak, but it's a beginning."

Pub Date: 8/09/99