Voter apathy pathetic (5/9/03)

Appalling and embarrassing.

What other words could be used to describe Tuesday’s primary election voter turnout?

With fewer than 30 percent of the registered voters bothering to show up, the 2003 primary has the dubious distinction of being one perhaps the worst examples of participatory democracy in the county’s history.

It sure didn’t make you proud to be an American.

Voter apathy has been a problem for decades, of course, but the Midwest and rural communities like our own have always done a better job than the nation as a whole when it comes to getting out the vote. That may be changing.

What’s particularly discouraging in the case of Portland’s primary is that six decent candidates gave the race their all. They campaigned vigorously, and they did a good job of getting their names and their messages before the public.

Unfortunately, that’s only half the equation.

The other side of the equation — getting people to actually make the effort to go to the polls and spend a couple of minutes in the voting booth — wasn’t there. As a result, lots of people who told the candidates, “You’ve got my vote,” stayed home.

Would it have changed the outcome? Probably not, given the margins of victory racked up by Republican Bruce Hosier and Democrat Maxine Lewis. But the fact is, we’ll never know.

We just hope the candidates, who certainly did their part, won’t find the whole thing too discouraging. We’d hate to see anyone soured on the democratic process by an unusually low voter turnout.

More than that, we hope we’ll be writing in November that the apathy has dissipated and public participation is back where it belongs. — J.R.

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