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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.
Scott Elliott is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He writes about education, city and suburban issues, politics, business, workforce and consumer issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2010 > July > 14 > Entry
Editorial: Cutting polling places didn’t cut turnout
2010 ELECTION
In Tuesday’s special Democratic primary, the number of voters in Warren County roughly equaled the number of Democratic poll workers.
The northern part of the county — 96 precincts with 91 polling places — is in the 3rd Congressional District. The district was having a special primary because the winner of the regularly scheduled May primary withdrew from the race.
The other counties in the district took advantage of a new state law that was passed for this election. Given the lack of public interest in the race, the law allowed counties to open only four polling places, while sending all registered voters an invitation to request a mail-in ballot.
Warren County didn’t go that route, in part because that would have required buying new equipment, the future usefulness of which would be in doubt, said elections director Keir Holeman.
The fact that different counties used different procedures allowed for a useful comparison between the counties. Some people have wondered whether dramatically reducing the number of polling places might reduce turnout. Answer: Apparently not. After all, how much lower could turnout have been in Warren County?
(By the way, the Warren County part of the 3rd District, though Republican territory, does have 14,000 registered Democrats, though the figure is somewhat inflated by the Rush Limbaugh effort to get warrior Republicans to vote for Hillary Clinton in the 2008 presidential primary.)
Actually, Mr. Holeman speculates that the arrangement used elsewhere might have increased turnout, by offering voters the mail-in option.
The Tuesday experiment came off well enough, allowing for the fact that every change brings confusion and irritation. The success, however, does not mean much for elections in which a lot of people want to vote.
So many voters still prefer the traditional way that cramming them into a few sites would be asking for trouble. (Montgomery County has already cut the number of its polling places in half.)
The 3rd District includes most of Montgomery County, which provided 87 percent of the votes, and all of Clinton and Highland counties.
The election was won largely by default by newcomer Joe Roberts. He got 44 percent of the vote in Montgomery County and districtwide. His opponents were a candidate who is in bankruptcy and behind in his child support and another who runs all the time.
Districtwide turnout, 5,647, was in the same 1-percent-of-the-population range as a very similar election in 2006, though slightly lower. That election had a stronger, more qualified candidate — former federal prosecutor Richard Chema — and came later in the year, nearer the general election.
At bottom, every indication is, as Montgomery County elections director Steve Harsman said, that the few who voted this time (and in 2006) were going to vote no matter what; and those who didn’t just weren’t going to, no matter what.
In a very low-profile race, Mr. Roberts had the least name recognition going in. That suggests that the few who voted took the race seriously. That seems a better theory of the outcome than the possibility that some people were attracted to the name Roberts, which has often been on local ballots. These particular voters were not likely confused.
The vote totals are on the laughable side. Some homecoming queens have won more votes than Joe Roberts. Most Democrats just didn’t see much point in worrying about which of three weak candidates goes up against entrenched Republican incumbent Mike Turner in the fall.
And yet, it’s worth knowing that 5,000 Democrats in the district take their citizenship seriously enough to feel that if there’s an election, they have a job to do, whether they like it or not. If you assume a like number of Republicans, that’s not such a small core.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Elections, Martin Gottlieb, Miami Valley Politics
Comments
By Max
July 15, 2010 10:09 AM | Link to this
DDN: “Most Democrats just didn’t see much point in worrying about which of three weak candidates goes up against entrenched Republican incumbent Mike Turner in the fall.”————While this might be true the Democrats -nationally - are putting resources into closely contested races while bolstering those presumably in the blue column. There is a growing party division - i.e. Pelosi’s last meeting at the WH - between moderates and progressives. This may be a good thing for the nation if moderate Democrat candidates win the party war, take some election losses, and meet with the Republicans in a bipartisan effort to get more done in Congress. OH3, specifically, and Ohio’s Gov. race, thus far, may be a concession by Democrats. The big question is how bad do Democrats want Turner’s seat in the next couple years? Potential candidates may want to start thinking about that now.