EDITORIAL: Low voter turnout at primary election is discouraging

Posted 8/23/16

Altogether, 6,750 Park County residents (around 54 percent of registered voters) cast their ballots in the primaries last week. This is the lowest voter participation since 2008.

Park County has nearly 24,000 adults, according to the latest …

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EDITORIAL: Low voter turnout at primary election is discouraging

Posted

We were disappointed to report that not very many people showed up to the polls for the primary election on Aug. 16. Casting our votes during the primaries is just as important as deciding who the winner is on Election Day, and we’d like to see Park County residents be more active in local politics.

Altogether, 6,750 Park County residents (around 54 percent of registered voters) cast their ballots in the primaries last week. This is the lowest voter participation since 2008.

Park County has nearly 24,000 adults, according to the latest estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. That means about 28 percent of adults of voting age participated in deciding who the candidates will be on November’s ballot.

With good weather and the option to vote absentee well beforehand, there’s no reason for such a low turnout.

As low as the local numbers were, Park County is slightly ahead of the rest of the state. Although it’s nice to be ahead of the curve, it would be even better if the standard wasn’t so low. 

Out of the total 447,212 adults in Wyoming over the age of 18, only 118,065 cast their ballots in the primary this year. That’s only about 26 percent of the eligible voters participating.

Think about it — that’s like having one person in a group of four deciding what’s best for the entire group while the other three remain silent.

Wyoming voter participation tends to drop in the primary during presidential election years. Compared to 2012, this year saw a 3 percent decrease for Park County.

It’s important that everyone participate in the primary elections and the general elections because every vote really does count. Last Tuesday, some of the races were within just a few votes of each other.

The bid for the Ward 3 seat on Powell City Council was nearly tied, with incumbent Lesli Spencer getting 136 votes (51.7 percent) and Doug Kirkham close behind with 124 votes (47.2 percent). That’s a difference of only 12 votes — or approximately one softball team.

The race for mayor of Cody also was a close call in last week’s primary with only a four-vote gap between the top two candidates. Charles Cloud received 970 votes (43.6 percent) and Matt Hall was only four votes behind with 966 (43.4 percent).

An outcome that small could be shifted by just one carload of voters.

Most of the contested races were on the Republican Party ballot, which could be why more Republicans participated in Park County. Around 61 percent of Park County’s registered Republicans voted, compared to 38.5 percent of Democrats and 9.8 percent of unaffiliated voters.

It really doesn’t matter what party, if any, you are affiliated with — what matters is going out and voting because the candidates we elect are there to represent us at the discussion table for topics that impact all of us. Everything from taxes to laws are created and decided on by elected officials, so to have no say in selecting your representative is to have no say in your community.

It’s a rare sight to have residents attend a city council or school board meeting, but the least we can do is have a say in who will represent us.

We won’t tell you who to vote for, but we will tell you who your options are and what their stances are in the time between now and Election Day, Nov. 8.

We hope to see an increase in participation in not just November’s election, but all future elections. Until then, we’ll do our best to keep you, our readers, up to date on what our candidates are up to and what their goals are if they win this year’s election.

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