News-Record.com

This week's column.

Talk about small consolation.

George Gilbert reminds us that the microscopic turnout in Oct. 9’s City Council primary was actually an improvement over the previous one in 2005.

Of all the city’s registered voters, 7 percent and change showed up this year versus half that number in 2005, said Gilbert, the county’s elections director.

In other words, a merely terrible showing instead of God­awful. Hoorah.

You could argue that it’s a sign of the times — that voters everywhere find city elections boring and irrelevant. But try these numbers on for size:

Turnout in Cary’s primary: 20 percent. In Raleigh: 16 percent. In Wilmington: 22 percent.

And in every case, local journalists were lamenting poor showings at the polls. Wait till they get a load of us.

Which begs the question: What makes people so especially detached and uninterested around here?

Ironically, this election seemed poised to many to break the mold of ho-hum primaries: lots of new faces among the candidates, plus the return of some familiar faces, plus a huge, generally well-qualified field — 32 in all who filed to run, 26 of them in the primary.

There were other hopeful signs: myriad, frequently well-attended candidate forums, two News & Record town hall meetings on the elections that drew capacity crowds.

This election also was the first under a new state law permitting same-day registration during early voting. That meant you could register and vote in one visit to the polls.

There even was a divisive controversy that seemed sure to fuel turnout, no matter which side you took. The simmering debate over the forced resignation of former Police Chief David Wray has become a front-burner issue among candidates and seemed to resonate in the community.
Still, 93 percent of the registered voters stayed home in a town where, I’m guessing, oh, a gazillion times more of us regularly vote for American Idols or buy Hannah Montana tickets.

Does it mean that the vast majority of Greensboro residents are satisfied with the status quo?

Does it mean the pro-Wray, throw-all-the-bums-out contingent is merely a small, but vocal minority?

Or does it mean the levels of distrust revealed in social capital studies have created a general sense of civic apathy?

Beats me. You could argue that voting could be made even easier, online, by the click of a mouse. But is convenience really the issue?

As Jason Hardin noted in a recent news story on the pitiful turnout, people around here aren’t always so blase about elective politics. In 2004, 67 percent of Guilford County voters came out for the presidential election between George W. Bush and John Kerry.

But that was an extraordinary circumstance, the result of a perfect political storm ignited by a sharply divided country and an increasingly unpopular war.

There’s still a sliver of hope.

The general election features a contested mayoral race between two good candidates, Yvonne Johnson and Milton Kern, a tightly packed at-large field and several very competitive district races. The T. Dianne Bellamy-Small-Tonya Clinkscale finale in District 1 and Sandy Carmany-Trudy Wade duel in District 5 promise close, hard-fought outcomes.

This still could be a compelling election after all. Or not. Even for those of us who were born and reared here, Greensboro can be an impossible place to figure out.

Half of me wants to believe my hometown is better than single-digit turnouts when such issues as jobs, growth and quality of life are at stake. The other wants to say voters will get precisely what they deserve if they choose to sit out the general election.

They will empower a small minority of people to pick their leaders and chart their city’s future.
They will have no right to complain when things don’t go their way.

And if they do, we, in turn, will have every right to tell them to sit down. And shut up.