Getting out the vote for cities.

St. Paul, Minnesota

On election day 1995, in cities across the country, urbanites will be voting for a variety of local offices. But unlike previous municipal elections, this time the ballot will include a list of U.S. Presidential hopefuls. Because of an initiative called CityVote, the first Presidential balloting will take place in the nation's urban centers, instead of in the cornfields of Iowa.

CityVote is an effort to reform the current Presidential primary calendar, which allows candidates to ignore urban areas. As it stands, the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, because they are the first electoral contests, command vastly disproportionate influence on the nominating process.

Larry Agran, the former mayor of Irvine, California, started CityVote in conjunction with the U.S. Conference of Mayors in 1992.

So far, eight cities have signed up - three of them in the state of Washington - Spokane, Olympia, and Tumwater, as well as Pasadena, Baltimore, Boston, Minneapolis, and St. Paul.

In the summer of 1995, participating cities will notify all active Presidential candidates that their names will appear on the November 7, 1995, ballot. In October, CityVote will sponsor four nationally televised candidate forums. The first will take place in St. Paul. On election day, voters will voice their nonbinding preference for the next President of the United States.

"CityVote's purpose is to focus unprecedented candidate and media attention on the problems of American cities, and on the possibilities for improving the quality of urban life everywhere," says Agran.

In each participating city, an advisory citizens' committee will work with local media to establish the forum of the debates, decide who will ask questions, and work on disseminating information about the candidates.

"For example, we will put together briefing books on each candidate to make available to the public," says John Kolstad, the Midwest coordinator of CityVote. "Then anyone will be able to go down to the local library and see what the candidates' positions are."

Nationally, the citizens' committee will establish criteria for including candidates in the debate - a key part of CityVote's mission.

Agran himself ran for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1992, only to be labeled by the major news media as a "minor" candidate, and be kept away from most of the nationally televised candidate forums. CityVote hopes to challenge the power the media have in determining Presidential front runners, while at the same time bringing national attention to the issues facing American cities.