Primarily speaking, apathy reigns, in Rochester
The City News Blog has a comprehensive rundown on Tuesday’s primary. You can learn all kinds of interesting facts, like the impact of name recognition, or the Mayor’s endorsement. But, the most striking part of the article is the number of people who showed out to place a ballot:
Voters are woefully apathetic. Yesterday’s Democratic primary was the only chance city residents will have this year to vote for City Council and School Board members. But just over 8 percent of registered Democrats showed up. That, Council member Adam McFadden said this morning, “means that a candidate that gets 2,000 votes can control a city of 200,000 people.”
“I was very discouraged by the low turnout,” McFadden said. “It says there is a huge amount of apathy in this community. It makes the job so much more difficult. A huge percent of the complaints I get are from people who don’t participate, which is very frustrating.”
“Not voting in the primary in the City of Rochester when you’re a Democrat - I just don’t get it,” McFadden said.
What is that? Are people that busy with their daily lives to ignore local elections which have the biggest impact on their daily lives?
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If there were Republican opponents waiting for the November elections, I think you’d see higher numbers. But, I think most people will just think “who cares, a Dem will be in there no matter what”. It’s not healthy for democracy to have unopposed elections - doesn’t matter which party is going unopposed.
I agree with about opposed elections but re the primaries - there was a choice of 14 candidates for 5 seats on the City Council. There were 3 County Legislature Primaries. Heck in Irondequoit there was a primary against the sitting Supervisor and two board members. All Democratic primaries.
I think that the many believe the Democrats are all the same and the more you know about the process and party you realize that all Democrats are not the same.
I also believe that people don’t care and involvement in primaries means they are involved in “politics” and “politics” is still “ugly.” That their vote doesn’t matter that the only election that matters is the Presidential election.
It is more than simply lack of Republican opposition in the November.
We have non-partisan elections for city council here in Raleigh. All candidates are on the ballot, if no candidate gets a majority then there is a runoff election.
Not that it helps turnout any(still about 10%), but it does allow everyone to participate.
[...] We had a primary last week. Really no surprises - conventional wisdom reigned supreme. Part of conventional wisdom is that no one shows up for primaries and this year was no different. [...]