Another low turnout: why?
Opinion
SECTION A, PAGE 12 THE GRANITE STATE NEWS THURSDAY, MARCH 19, 2015
As we were gathering the vote totals to do our election report last week, we saw the same pattern emerge that we saw in March 2014: the total votes cast was less than the year before. In some cases the winners this year won by total votes that would have made them losers last year.
Add to that the fact that there were very few contested positions, and it would be hard not to see a growing disconnection between town residents and their government.
As we have observed before, this is not a local phenomenon. Nationally the vote last November had the worst turnout in 72 years and on average, our national representatives were elected by just 20 percent of voters.
On the national level one can begin to understand why so many people have lost faith in the democratic process. Congress has approval levels in the single digits, political campaigns are driven by private money interests and cynically focus on demeaning the character of opponents and questioning their motives, and, in the end, we have a national government being weakened by thousands of small cuts and a Congress incapable of passing any legislation, let alone trying to solve any of the obvious problems the nation is facing.
We also have a national media, particularly cable news, that is driven to view every piece of news in a sordid light to make it more dramatic and entertaining. Politicians saying foolish things produce the best ratings.
So there are reasons for a national apathy, even if those reasons are not good ones (in the sense that voting all incumbents out and voting money out of political campaigns would solve the problem), but why do so few voters show up at the polls in local elections?
There is the benign view that local voters are, for the most part, satisfied with how their towns and schools are running and assume that things will continue to hum along without them bothering to vote. The rationale here is that people lead busy lives – many of them working multiple jobs to make ends meet – and free time is so limited that it can’t be spared to pay attention to politics or to vote.
Then there is the less charitable view that people are too self-absorbed to care what is going on in their world outside of their immediate circle of work and family.
We think that while these views are valid, they do not take into account the impact of state and national politics on how people view local government and those involved with it.
Last week we wrote about how in some towns (notably Tuftonboro) some people are actively promoting distrust of local government and disrespecting local elected officials. In the case of Tuftonboro we know that the person in the forefront of the distrust and disrespect movement has more than one personal grudge against the town in general and two of the three selectmen in particular. The puzzle is why others listen to this person and allow his anger and conspiracy theories to drive their actions.
Some of those others were opposed to spending money on building a new Tuftonboro library, and for them the third defeat of that proposal at Town Meeting last week should settle things. The two new members elected to the budget committee will hopefully improve the atmosphere on that board, which has had a particularly testy relationship with selectmen over the past year or so.
In any event, we all need to commit ourselves to positive choices, to persuading the best and brightest among us to run for office and help us govern ourselves fairly and openly. We also need to respect those we elect for their dedication and service.
The simple fact is that local politics is not national politics. No one makes a living running for local office: in most towns the few officials who are paid a stipend make less than the minimum wage. There are few favors to sell and the openness of government makes it very difficult to do so.
The rewards of being an elected official are the pleasures of making sure government is responsive to residents and efficient as possible and earning the respect, trust and gratitude of your fellow townspeople. We can’t let a few unhappy people put those rewards at risk: don’t tolerate disrespect and distrust by your silence. Speak up.