We know two things for sure about next week’s primary election. First, it will effectively decide many races, since most contests are in one-party districts these days. Where the two major parties have a more or less even playing field, the primary will decide which two major candidates duke it out in the main event.
Yet the second thing we know is that the vast majority of Michiganders – probably, close to eighty percent – won’t participate in the primary at all. They will leave much of the choice of who runs our state for the next few critical years to a handful of people.
And while I don’t know about you, I find that frightening. There’s something like seven and a half million registered voters in Michigan. We’ll be lucky if even one quarter of those show up to vote in the primary next week. Turnout was far less than that, two years ago.
True, the only contested statewide race is for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate. But there are other important races, and while personalities get most of the attention, next week’s election will determine other things that may be even more important.
In Southeast Michigan, for example, the voters will decide whether to continue to fund SMART, the county’s public transportation system. If it fails, the buses, which also make special runs to serve the elderly and disabled, will stop rolling.
In Kent County, voters decide whether to appropriate $6.6 million a year for new services to the elderly. These are major questions, and ought to be decided by more than one-quarter of us.
What is baffling to me is that more of us don’t take voting in primaries more seriously. Two years ago, did you really think John Kerry vs. George Bush was the best our system could do? Many people didn’t. But only a tiny fraction turned up to vote in the presidential primaries that decided those nominations.
Eight years ago, Geoffrey Fieger, the flamboyant attorney, spent millions to win the Democratic nomination for governor. He had never run for anything before, or held office, but was a familiar face from many televised trials. On primary day, the turnout was so abysmal that Fieger won by getting about four percent of the total pool of registered Michigan voters.
During the campaign he said his opponent was descended from a barnyard animal, and asked that his infant daughters’ diapers be removed to see if they had corkscrew tails. Not surprisingly, he lost in a landslide, carrying other Democrats down with him.
So if you think everything is fine, and you trust our system and a handful of voters to always do what is best and right … you are nuts. And besides, people from Nathan Hale to Viola Liuzzo died so that you could have the right to mark that ballot.
So stop making your state and nation look bad, and get yourself to the polls.
My wife and I live in Ypsilanti Twp., and although we know that our neighbors seem to like one particular candidate, we have no other information about any of the candidates or proposals. The Ann Arbor News has covered City of Ann Arbor and City of Ypsilanti candidates and proposals, but has had no mention of Ypsilanti Twp. Even the usually-dependable Publius.org has no information for us. And although we receive plenty of mailers from some of the candidates or their offices, all this really tells us is whose campaign has the most to spend.
Many Michiganders probably do suffer from terminal voter apathy, but in other cases, the information needed to make an informed decision is buried in hours of community television, requiring time which we just don't have.
I've been taught that every US citizen has the responsiblity to vote in an informed and educated manner. Voting without information or education sounds more dangerous to me than not voting at all. With voter turn-out so low, votes based on a reckognized name can easily outweigh votes for the most qualified candidate.
My wife and I will continue to search for information in this upcoming primary, and we will go to our polling location, but we might have to leave large sections blank.
Posted by: Joe V | August 01, 2006 at 07:06 PM
Try the Ann Arbor News ... or the Michigan Secretary of State's website. Also, publius.org
Posted by: Jack Lessenberry | August 02, 2006 at 11:42 AM