Twenty-two percent? Say it ain’t so

After the primary election this week, I overheard News-Times reporter Melanie Wilkinson from across the newsroom explain, upon returning in record time from the courthouse with full results in hand, that the early evening was because “nobody voted.”
I took her meaning to be figurative at the time, but soon came to understand her statement was much closer to literal. Sadly so.
It wasn’t the most red-hot election ever conducted, I admit. The fact it was ‘only’ a primary is acknowledged as well. But the turnout was pathetic by any measure. Shameful in fact.
Even I, who has become numbed by election after election in which less than half of registered voters bothered to stop and cast a ballot, was stunned to learn York County’s needle crawled to a wretched 22 percent.
As Mel rightly pointed out, only half of York County’s 20,000 souls are registered to begin with. This includes ineligible county residents like underage kids and prison inmates, but that still leaves a lot of unregistered adults ‘out there’ in our population.
So we carve away half the population to begin with, then live with the decisions made by less than a quarter of those who remain.
I wonder, have the majority of you out there given up on America? Maybe you’re just bone lazy, which is bad. Or, even more terrifying, do you just not give a damn?
Did you think there wasn’t enough of consequence on this ballot to warrant getting out of the car, walking up the sidewalk and taking less than 10 minutes to fill in a few ovals? If that’s your excuse I’m confident the two incumbents for York County commissioner who lost, as well as the newcomers who defeated them, are thoroughly and rightly insulted.
I have a growing swarm of bees in my bonnet as ascending age and descending frustration tolerance march on, but one of the bees that’s buzzed the longest in there is wretched voter turnout at the polls. Drives me nuts as It continues to slide despite changes that make voting more and more convenient for every one of us.
The bottom line? If you don’t vote you have no right to make so much as a peep of complaint. Twenty-two percent of one-half of us are now free to howl like banshees between now and the general election this fall. Seventy-eight percent of one-half of us, on the other hand, chose to join the apathetic silent majority.
How sorry is that?
Contact — stephen.moseley@yorknewstimes.com