With the upcoming election next Tuesday I am once again reminded about Shawnee's track record of voter apathy...........particularly in local elections.
It seems that when it comes to the "big ones" (presidential) the turnout is great...........when it comes to the local ones..........Shawnee's citizens sit on their rear ends and do nothing. Ironically, it is local government that has the greatest impact on our daily lives (public safety, sales and property taxes, road maintenance, etc)..........followed by county then state then federal.
Let the numbers speak for themselves:
2008 General Election (Presidential).....Shawnee as a whole and then Shawnee's ward 3, the ward with the highest number of registered voters:
Shawnee registered voters: 40,791
Shawnee voted: 32,266............ 79.10% (fairly good)
Ward 3 registered voters: 11,966
Ward 3 voted: 9,892................ 82.67% (best of the four wards)
2010 General Election (Council):
Shawnee registered voters: 39,862
Shawnee voted: 3,901............. 9.79% (disgusting)
Ward 3 registered voters: 11,930
Ward 3 voted: 893............. 7.49% (worst of the four wards)
What actually happened here locally is that using ward 3 as the example, 470 people elected their council member to represent 11,930 voters. Or, to put it another way, 3.9% of the voters made the decision for the other 96.1% .
Next week's election is for governor, congress, senate and some state legislative seats. I'd guess there will be about a 50% turnout...............better than the city elections...........not as good as the presidential election, and still too low. At the next city election (2012) I would hope that we as a city have a better turn out than the less than 10% we had this year.
Voting is a right, that many have served to protect. There are literally hundreds of millions of people worldwide that would like to be able to have that right. Remember that also the following week, on Veteran's Day, November 11.
