Freedom Polling To Protest Slates Of Major Parties

The Conference for New Political Action, a dissident Democrat's group, hopes to show widespread voter disenchantment over the three major Presidential candidates with a straw poll in scattered Massachusetts precincts Tuesday.

Sen. Eugene J. McCarthy and Dick Gregory will be listed on the "Freedom Poll" ballot along with the major candidates. Space for write-ins will be provided.

In Cambridge

The group plans to set up tables outside a limited number of regular polling places in Cambridge, Springfield, Amherst, and other cities. Straw poll voters will be checked against regular registration lists, and will be encouraged to vote in the official election.

Richard C. Sterne, Simmons College professor and chairman of CNPA's steering committee, said yesterday the ballots will be placed in sealed boxes and counted by objective observers.

People between the ages of 18 and 21 will be polled separately. Non-residents of Massachusetts may take part in that poll.

Wide Open

The straw poll is intended to be completely open, although CNPA had voted in September to direct a write-in campaign for McCarthy, Sterne said. The courts' failure to make write-ins clearly legal doomed that effort and it was too late to form a fourth party, Sterne added.

Charles Knight, Cambridge coordinator for the poll, said yesterday the group plans freedom booths in the Harvard Square area at the Cambridge Central Library and possibly at the Harvard-Epworth Church.

Cambridge Councilman Barbara Ackermann and John D. Elder, assistant dean of the Divinity School, members of the conference, said they still believed in the efficacy of the system.