There was a primary election yesterday in my home state of Illinois. Voter turnout was extremely low, at around 24%. The CBS Chicago reported that it was the lowest turnout for a presidential primary in more than 70 years.
What I find interesting about voter turnout is it inverse relationship to the importance of the election. Turnout is always lowest for the elections that have the most direct impact on the voters' lives. Local elections, where we elect city and county officials, school board members and judges, are the elections which pick the people who will be passing the laws that determine speed limits, library hours, parking rights, community development, etc. In retrospect, the President, whose election always has the best voter turnout, really does little that directly impacts your day to day life.
I was thinking that this is not too different from how we look at ads. There is always a lot of conversation and discussion about the ads that run during the Super Bowl, when those ads are largely branding campaigns. These image ads are the topic of water cooler conversations and Yahoo articles for days or weeks after the big event. The ads that really make a difference in your day to day life, ads that tell you that grapes are on sale or that your favorite band is playing in town or what the phone number of your local barber is, are ads that you hardly even notice, even though you use them daily.
Perhaps we would start getting better voter turnout at local elections, if we could figure out a way to help people see the impact they have on their lives. I suspect the same is true of local ads.
bill, thank you for the thoughtful post. I am active politically at the local/state level. we have had declining voter turn-out over the years so that the last city council election garnered less than 10%. I used to think that those elections would have higher participation for exactly the reasons you mention - council & school boards being so close to home. any thoughts on this?
ReplyDeleteI suspect that there are a many reasons behind the decline in participation in local elections, including skepticism on the value of the individual vote, skepticism on the value of one candidate over another, changes in voting processes that make it harder for the lightly engaged citizen to know when and how to vote, and a lack of clarity in political discourse on the value of EVERYONE getting out to vote.
ReplyDeleteMore specifically on local elections, I think it comes down to people not realizing the impact that local elected officials have on their day-to-day lives. With the diminishing number of local media sources, there are fewer and fewer third party sources (ie: media) to share those stories that tell us the value and impact of those local elected officials. When all you have is regional and national media, who is covering the city council meeting?