[Vision2020] 19 of 19 Precincts

Wed Nov 4 13:39:53 PST 2009

The City Council certified the canvass of votes without a hitch a little past 12 Noon today.

Re: what Councilman Carscallen said - Participation in Precincts 1 and 8 was dismal, as it was in 2005 and 2007.  Those precincts are primarily made up of the UI campus, res halls and frats/sorors, and some adjacent large complexes.  To be fair, some of those voters have graduated and are no longer here, and others may have moved off campus and into other precincts.  Precincts 13 and 18, the two other close-in precincts that have a lot of undergrads, also had markedly poor turnout.  

Then again, my own precinct - 15 - which is mostly single-family homes and isn't very transient in nature, only had 42% of our voters turn out.

It's always a challenge getting people to pay attention to elections and vote, especially at the local level.  Sometimes those of us who are really engaged in what's going on forget that our neighbors also have busy lives and have very different primary interests/hobbies, so they're not paying as close attention as we are.  The only reason I had the time and energy to get immersed in the local issues over the past few months (after a year of living here) and help a candidate I believe in was because I'd taken a break from working full-time outside of the home.  If I was still commuting to Lewiston and practicing law there, forget about it.

Rather than lament the situation, those of us involved in the process (from grassroots activists like me up to those of you who are elected officials and local government staff) have a special responsibility to take every opportunity to make sure our neighbors know about what's going on and try to get just a little more of their attention and input.  Campaigns are a good opportunity to get people engaged, especially if the campaigns remain focused on ideas and goals and legitimate comparisons/contrasts, rather than trying to slime the other side.  

Students can be especially tough to reach, especially with a local campaign.  I remember being an undergrad in southern California, in grad school and law school at WSU and UW, and working extensively with Whitman College undergrads as a campaign field organizer in 2000 in Walla Walla.  As an undergrad, I took off on road trips with fellow Young Dems to help with door to door and phones in a targeted State Assembly race and a San Fran mayoral race.  But I and my College Dems group didn't get involved at all in local City Council or County-level races, and I'm realizing (to my chagrin) that I don't think I ever voted in a municipal election in undergrad.  In Walla Walla in 2000, dozens of Whitman College students gave many hours of volunteer man-power, but they were primarily energized by Gary Locke's re-elect, Maria Cantwell's race for US Senate, and the Gore campaign, not by our efforts to re-elect our 16th LD State Senator.  I got involved in a few local campaigns during law school, but I'd lived in Seattle a few years before that, had worked for a City Councilmember, and felt rooted and engaged in my community.  I also heard tell of former UW students who first got elected to the Lege or City Council while they were in school (Wes Uhlman, who was later Seattle's mayor, is one such case) - but they targeted their peers for persuasion and turnout.

As a new voter, it's challenge enough just getting versed in national and state-level issues.  It helps that candidates for those offices actually generally make some effort to reach out to students and tailor a message to the concerns of students and young workers.  It's less frequent that municipal or legislative candidates do the same, and I've never seen a county-level candidate focus seriously on the youth vote.  So if you're a new voter, you don't already have roots in the area, and you're also busy just taking care of your studies, working part-time, figuring out what you want to do with the rest of your life, and possibly even parenting a young child, odds are good that you're not going to tune into a local election unless someone gives you a darn good reason to do so. 

The prospective voters are out there.  But it's up to the candidates and the campaigns to get their attention and get them paying attention, voting, and hopefully involved in one way or another going forward.  Our democracy is important enough to put as much effort into recruiting participants as we put into recruiting volunteers for a PTA fundraiser or top athletes for our colleges.  We can each be boosters, cheerleaders, or evangelists for democracy in our own way.  I suspect everyone here does that already, but if we want civic engagement to improve, maybe we need to kick it up a few notches. 

- Selina

From: areaman at moscow.com
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Date: Wed, 4 Nov 2009 07:18:20 -0800
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] 19 of 19 Precincts

About 200 more voters than in 2005, 800 less than in 2007.

You almost have to throw out 30% of the registered voters, though, because they may have registered for last year’s presidential election, yet they’re not a citizen of Moscow anymore (the county purges the list every few years), so that would put it up to an “actual” turnout of about 50%.

Still, one wonders how it compares to some of the smaller towns in the area (Genesee had 330 votes cast for mayor, Kendrick had 137), but I don’t believe the totals are available for that since the county didn’t run those elections.

Having been through this a few times, it is pretty interesting to look at which precincts turn out (and which ones don’t).  The 8th precinct is pretty pathetic.

DC

-----Original Message-----
From: vision2020-bounces at moscow.com [mailto:vision2020-bounces at moscow.com] On Behalf Of Garrett Clevenger
Sent: Tuesday, November 03, 2009 11:55 PM
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: [Vision2020] 19 of 19 Precincts

VOTER TURNOUT - TOTAL  31.67 Way to go, Moscow. Almost 32% came out to vote! Wait a minute, that actually's pretty pathethic. Never mind. 

Garrett Clevenger

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