Off-year elections are always low turnout, but this year was a new high-water mark for what I consider “low turnout” came when the ballots were tallied on the night of November 7.
I’ve gotten used to a pattern where it takes many hours for returns to be counted and posted for Polk, so I was surprised the majority of the election results were available by 8:30 p.m. An even greater shock came when I started reading the printouts from the Board of Elections for the 2023 vote.
For instance: 114 people out of hundreds of residents decided for the City of Aragon who should represent their city in the coming years. You read that correctly: 114 people.
It was a contested election too, with some seats coming down to just a handful of votes (between five and six votes depending on the seat.) There is a population of around 1,000 people within the city limits of Aragon. Yet only 114 people could be bothered to come out to the polls and take part in the process.
The extension and spending of $64 million through 2032 of the Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) came down to under 2,000 voters countywide deciding that it should be extended and the money allocated to the county government and cities.
YET these are the same people who complain about the results and never can be bothered to go participate. The same group who get on social media and decry having to pay extra sales taxes for the government to waste on stupid projects. This is why my only participation on social media is to post items and move along.
Not enough people are participating in the process of voting no matter what year it is, and I think I understand why this is happening on a basic level.
Essentially, people are burned out with politics at every level. Whether it be the infighting of a local council or commission up to the national bloodsport that is the Presidential campaign that essentially continues no matter what year it is, we are all done with the constant bludgeoning of the messaging and the being told what we think is wrong.
Whether it be ultra-left wing ‘WOKE’ language censorship or the radically “dangerous” right-wingers who are suddenly all into authoritarianism to protect Donald Trump, the message is that “You are wrong and I’m always right and nothing you say will change my mind.”
This was the kind of black-and-white thinking that has gotten Americans and other nations of the world into trouble in the past and present and will dominate future thinking if the majority of people sit around and do nothing about it. It is also the kind of thinking that takes way too many people down rabbit holes dominated by extreme content and ideologies that in previous generations of those creating and consuming articles and books that would get them labeled communists or nazis.
Now based on the amount of people on social media sharing their thoughts on a variety of subjects ranging from wartorn regions of the world to geopolitical economics well above their understanding, you would think I’m completely wrong on that subject.
The disconnect between what people do and say online versus what they do in real life is greater than you might see on the surface. Take any group of friends you know online and in real life, actually, take a look at what they are saying and sharing online versus what they do or say in real life.
In real life, most people gathered together at meetings or in social interactions keep their opinions to themselves when it comes to their beliefs or intentions on various subjects. Think about the last time you got into a real debate on any kind of important political subject. Usually happens around this time of year in the midst of holiday gatherings, when family and friends who have gone a while without seeing each other MIGHT bring up something happening locally amid the gossip of a post-Turkey and fixings feast. The conversations are basically “<insert scandalous story here>” and someone chiming in to say “Can you believe that? Of all things.” Or something appropriately generic.
Who has conversations about Israel and Gaza in real life who isn’t intimately involved in the nation’s political or media industries? In what universe is someone out there caring when Florida Gov. Ron Desantis goes and bans some books in an artificial show of piety that no one believes? (Or those heels, seriously. Why would anyone vote for this guy for President?)
People aren’t buying into the insanity of enforcing language on people because it might hurt someone’s feelings as much as they aren’t buying into the idea that January 6 was a “tourist visit by a big crowd.” Even the blind can see through the maze of misdirection and nonsense being peddled by both sides in these kinds of stupid cultural conflicts that continue.
Yeah, I’m listing a lot of different reasons for the “ballot box fatigue” but the biggest one I can think of is TRUST.
Leadership in the United States has for the last few decades been more about deciding upon the least inoffensive candidates from parties on a national level. It comes down to sneaky infighting, or quiet challengers to the establishment, the career party line decision-makers on the state level, and “please will someone do the job” on many local levels.
I’ve found that locally here in Polk County, we have been lucky to in recent years find that we have good people stepping up in leadership roles when running for office. Some haven’t been so great and haven’t stuck around, others have.
Now I recognize that everyone is human. From Presidents Trump and Biden down the line to local commissioners and council members. We all make mistakes and we all have to ultimately face the consequences of our actions good or bad. The world does not slow down for us to make decisions or understand fully the impacts of those decisions. You sometimes only have hours or minutes to make an informed choice that could cause calamitous results for generations to come.
So when the best anyone can think we can do is a repeat of what has come before either with the current administration or those from the past, the burnout about going to the ballot becomes ever more acute.
People want change, they are longing for more than what has been offered in the past decades between the terms of Presidents Bush Senior and Junior, Clinton and Obama, and Trump and Biden. The evolving landscapes demand something better in the offering on the ballots, but no one comes forward for fear of being canceled for saying the wrong thing or for invoking the wrath of a minority of the Republican party primary voters who think their version of the world is the one that should predominate all.
So if we are going to do something about this ballot box burnout in 2024, the first thing we need to recognize is this: real change is required, but it doesn’t come without deciding that we need to vote together to make a change at the top of the tickets across the board.
Otherwise that 114 people who voted in Aragon this year? That’s going to represent a future where no one gets a say in how things are run at some point, and we’ll all be signing a Ballot Box Blues to lament what we have lost.
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