Suppose they held an election…and nobody voted?
Primay elections seldom draw big turnouts but this year’s hotly-contested race for the Democratic nomination for governor was expected to bring out the voters.
Didn’t happen.
In Virginia, just 6.3 percent of the eligible voters turned out: 318,842 out of 5,071,226.
In Floyd County, the turnout was even more dismal: Just 3.5 percent with 353 votes cast out of a possible 10,109,
While our county is considered more Republican than Democrat anyone can vote in a primary and members of one party sometimes vote in the other party’s primary to try and affect the outcome. With a 6.3 percent turnout statewide and 3.5 percent here in Floyd County, that didn’t happen.
At 12:15 p.m. Tuesday, the Little River precinct polling place at the Floyd County Rescue Squad Station 1 (above) was empty. Just 30 people had cast votes at that point. My wife voted more than hour later and the number was up to 40.
That’s not just a low turnout: It’s downright embarrassing.
Karl Hess, one of my favorite political writers, once said, “Revolution, like charity, starts at home.” I guess most Americans think change starts at the top instead of the bottom, judging by the statistics on voter turnout for elections. This election is no different than thousands of others across America.
“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty — power is ever stealing from the many to the few…. The hand entrusted with power becomes … the necessary enemy of the people. Only by continual oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot: only by unintermitted Agitation can a people be kept sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity.”
Wendell Phillips, speech in Boston, Massachusetts, January 28, 1852.
I guess most Americans don’t regard liberty very highly, judging by their participation in elections.