Nov 5, 2017 4 min read

Tuesday is Election Day, and Washington County will go to the polls.

Well, a few of us will.

The Washington County Elections Office is forecasting a turnout of slightly more than 20 percent. That means that one-in-five registered voters will participate in determining a Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice, four Superior Court judges, two Commonwealth Court judges, a very significant ballot question, a recorder of deeds for Washington County and hundreds of local offices.

In fact, it is fewer than one-in-five citizens who could be voting who will determine all this. In Washington County, 83 percent of people age 18 or over are registered to vote. While this is significantly higher than the national average of 64 percent, it means that, in reality, only one-in-six people, or 16.6 percent, are making the decisions for the uninterested 83 percent.

While the few will take the time to vote, the many will find plenty of time to complain about the results.

Historically, in off-year elections, the voter turnout has averaged 21 percent. In years when county row offices, county commissioners and judges are elected, turnout averages about 32 percent. In gubernatorial and congressional election years, turnout averages about 45 percent. In presidential election years, turnout averages 68 percent, with a high of 74.5 percent in 2016.

In America, we love to talk about democracy and our precious right to vote. We speak reverently of those who have made sacrifices to assure us of this right, but we have a strange way of demonstrating that love and respect.

Of 172 nations in the world where voting occurs, the United States ranks 138th in voter turnout. We average 47.7 percent voter-age turnout, while countries such as Italy, Canada and India are far ahead of us.

In polls done to determine why people do not vote, the primary reason given is that a potential voter is “too busy.” It is unlikely that this is the entire reason. Indifference, lack of interest and lack of involvement in community and civic affairs have to play a role. People will make time for things that matter to them. Apparently, democracy doesn’t rate high on the “matters” scale to many people.

Every year there are calls to “change things” to improve voter turnout. Suggestions include email voting, weekend voting, early voting, mail voting and voting on a day other than Tuesday. In Puerto Rico, Election Day is a holiday from work, and their turnout is higher than the national average. Countries that vote on weekends, such as France, Germany, Japan and Thailand, generally see higher turnouts than the United States. Oregon votes entirely by mail, and has a voting rate higher than the national average.

Of course, there are other factors that influence the voting rates in other countries, but there are certainly indications that alternatives to voting on Tuesdays may be worth exploration.

The when-and-how of voting still does not address the general apathy issue. We see by the numbers that people get involved in a presidential race, involved to a lesser degree in a gubernatorial race and pretty much ignore local races. That is a real shame, because the local races really shape the contours of our politics. Supervisors and school board members impact local issues, but they also tend to become delegates to state and national nominating conventions, and then county commissioners, state representatives, state senators and eventually congressmen and senators.

Local elected officials have contact with party officials in their communities and participate in developing grass-roots political efforts. No high-level politician ever got elected without the support of local officials and those they influence.

Indeed, all politics is local.

Too often, when voters fail to turn up, officials are elected almost by default. A special interest group or a group of insiders can easily elect a disruptive candidate to serve their purposes, and it will be to the detriment of a community when it only takes a few votes to win. People not driven by an interest in specific issues tend not to vote. Those who have axes to grind come out in high percentages.

Most would agree with the notion that power corrupts. The antidote to centralized governmental power is to keep power at the local level, and the way to do that is to elect qualified and motivated local officials and keep power local. That occurs when citizens become interested in and involved with local politics, and turn out to make informed choices.

On Tuesday, we have an opportunity to exercise the most valuable right of democracy, the right to vote. We have done much better than the forecast 20 percent on certain occasions. Let’s make Tuesday one of them.