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18 YEARS OLD AND ALL SET TO VOTE–NO WAY

As the Republican presidential candidates made their forays into Iowa corn country and New Hampshire timberlands, seeking to ignite those likely to vote, 18-year-old Isabel Quintero was trying to woo the most reluctant voters in America.

As the student registrar sat at a table in the halls of Foreman High School, watching students saunter past carrying books or finishing the last bites of lunch from the cafeteria, a ground-level view of democracy was playing out that highlighted the vast gap between some of the candidates and America’s urban realities.

Here were the youngest potential voters in the nation and a group that, surveys show, are least likely to exercise their right.

And beyond the built-in challenge of registering kids distracted by cars, social life, homework or even drugs and violence, Cook County registration officials in their unprecedented push to lure high school voters have discovered some unanticipated hurdles that reflect the ethnic character of an urban school system.

For one thing, many 18-year-olds are not even eligible to vote because they are not naturalized citizens.

And while those eligible to vote said they intend to cast their first ballot next month, they said they were disheartened by the absence of a diverse field of candidates who shared even a slice of their experience.

Still, the good news was that at least some students, by virtue of their age, hadn’t yet become hardened cynics about the electoral process either.

For example, the 1,900 students at Foreman, at 3235 N. Leclaire Ave. on the Northwest Side, include about 500 recent Polish immigrants and about 150 students from Mexico and other Latin American countries–a third of the school in all–according to Principal John Garvey.

During the course of a special civics class held last week, Chicago school officials learned that hundreds of the 12,862 students whose age makes them eligible to vote in the March 19 primary are immigrants in need of naturalization.

“This has never been tried,” said Paul Vallas, chief executive officer of Chicago schools. “This has never been done before, the whole civics week and voter registration thing, so we’re learning as we go along.”

So on Thursday, the school system and the United Neighborhood Organization are scheduled to launch a naturalization program for students as well as their parents, school officials said. In some cases, naturalized students said they had registered to vote while their naturalized parents had not.

Tuesday is the final day for the schools’ voter registration drive for the primary, and officials plan to resume the project later this school year for the November general election.

The voter registration drive, supported by Mayor Richard Daley and several other officials and organizations, has yielded early mixed results, including 150 newly registered students at Chicago Vocational High on the South Side, 100 at Curie High School on the Southwest Side, 54 at Senn High on the North Side, and 51 at Foreman, according to officials and teachers.

“My read on this is some schools have moved really aggressively and some have not. We’re not mandating that schools do this,” Vallas said. “We think so far the participation rate has been pretty good.”

Voters from 18 to 20 have the ignominious distinction of providing the worst turnout in every congressional and presidential election since 1980, ranging as low as 16.5 percent in last year’s elections, according to the U.S. Bureau of Census.

Participation increases with age group, and voters older than 65 have the highest participation, 60 percent last year, according to the Census Bureau.

For the two past weeks, Quintero has been making her share of sacrifices to bring fresh blood into the republic. She gave up a study period to attend her table outside the lunchroom. And many days, she went hungry because she worked right through lunch.

“It’s important to vote. It’s the vote that counts. It’s your voice,” said Quintero, who said she will vote for the first time in next month’s primary. “We’ve been getting 10 people a day. It’s been pretty good.”

Alex Ocampo, who turned 18 on Saturday, was born in Chicago but raised in the state of Guerrero, Mexico, and returned to Chicago four years ago, he said.

“I’m excited because it’s the first time I will be voting, and it is interesting to learn about how the government works and everything,” Ocampo said.

In some cases, students were setting an example for their parents.

New voter Lorena Delgado, an 18-year-old senior, has been trying to persuade her parents, both naturalized citizens, to become voters, especially as politicians now target immigrants and their children in plans to reduce public services, she said.

“They say it’s a waste of time. There’s too much fuss, why should they go and register. I tell them and argue with them: Why aren’t they going to do something for themselves. They just don’t say anything, they keep quiet,” Delgado said. “I don’t think it’s right. They should do something.”

Some students, like senior Nicomedes Castillo, 18, found that registering to vote can carry an unexpected benefit.

His “Law in American Society” teacher, Robert Hirsh, happened to be working the registration table when he signed up.

“Thank you very much for stopping by,” Hirsh, 35, told him. “I won’t forget this at grade time.”