Bedsheet Election

What if you held an election and no one came?

The results are in and the winners are… hello?  Anyone out there?  Is this thing on?

A few days ago I complained that this year’s local election was too much about money — namely, taxes.  Again.  And that despite the fact that this year’s most notable issue was probably going to be town center visioning (and not the budget or property taxes or water bills or anything else with a dollar sign in front of it), not much time was spent on it during the campaign.

But this question is moot when voters don’t care about any issue at all.

In the Billerica’s 2011 local election, turnout was abysmal.  There’s no nice way to put it.  A grand total of 3,214 ballots were cast.  We have 24,666 voters registered.  This amounts to a 13.0% turnout rate.  Experts were projecting at least 15%. How slow was it at the polls, which were open for 12 hours?  People trickled in at a rate of about 24 voters per hour per precinct, on average.

Pathetic.

As for the candidates, the newspaper reported that winners Dave Gagliardi collected 36.5% of the vote and Bob Accomando received 34% of the vote.  This is technically true, but another way of looking at it is that 22,667 people registered in Billerica did not vote for Gagliardi (91.9%), and 22,803 people did not vote for Accomando (92.4%).  Hard to feel like the whole town is behind you with numbers like that.  They look even worse when you divide by the entire population of the town, which is about 40,000.

If Accomando was celebrating being elected to his second term as selectmen, his excitement was tempered by disappointment.  From the Lowell Sun story:

Accomando, who stood outside yesterday from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m., called the turnout “terrible.”"I think these elections are more important than the presidential elections,” he said. “We affect people’s lives instantly, whereas the president can make a change and we won’t feel it for a few years.”

For a leader who doesn’t say much, I’m glad Bob expressed himself.  It shows he does care about the health of democracy in his town.

What does this sad turnout tell us?  Some possibilities:

• Voters are not as angry about property taxes as we think they are.  If the voters are fist-pounding mad about being taxed, overtaxed, and taxed some more — as the Tea Party movement was supposed to prove — then where are they all?  Do you really mean to tell me that alleged day-in-day-out recession/unemployment angst doesn’t push proud Americans to take 5 minutes to vote once a year?
• Voters have campaign promise fatigue.  We have been listening to hundreds of candidates at all levels (local, state, federal) tell us they are going to cut our taxes and not one has succeeded.  Paul Marasco centered his campaign around our 75% property tax bill bump since 2000.  That’s a lot, but he learned that 23,052 voters don’t care and therefore didn’t vote for him.
• The races — maybe the candidates — were a major snore.  First, when you have 3 people running for 2 seats (the case in both the BOS and  PB races) you have a 67% chance of winning just by showing up.  And the BOS race featured 3 likable fellows, none of whom said or did anything remotely offensive during the campaign.  Very little to get us out of our bedsheets and into the car for the short drive (or walk) on a nice day to the voting places.  The election had zero buzz to speak of.  I heard more people talking about the Town Center Visioning public meeting, which was 2 days before the election.
• Billerica lacks a sense of community.  As you know I think this stems from having no central “meeting place” — an area where people randomly run into friends and acquaintances and talk local issues.  This is much more important to having a cohesive community most people realize.  You think standing on the Town Common beneath a campaign sign waving at anonymous cars speeding by really gets people excited about participating in democracy?

My wife and I voted about an hour before the polls closed, tired from hosting a lively party for our three-year-old.  A few other leftover thoughts after we left the mostly-empty Kennedy School:

• Do the people of Billerica not read the news?  People across the Middle East are revolting against their tyrannical leaders, dying for a chance to be free.  They, along with millions of people in countless other countries have never voted in a real election.  Everybody knows Americans take the privilege of voting for granted, but isn’t that getting more and more embarrassing with each world news headline like this we read?
• What lack of respect it shows poll workers.  They are all volunteers, most of whom are retired.  Most work all day.  They have 4 elections to work in 2012.  At what point will they throw up their hands and say, “to hell with it?”
• Our election was on a Saturday.  Not many people had the excuse of being too busy with work.  How bad would turnout have been if our election had been on a Tuesday?  What if it rained?
• Are we really a “political town,” which we love to think of ourselves as?  We’ll see as election numbers roll in from surrounding towns.

Okay, a sentence or two about the results themselves.  Not great for the visioning effort.  Gagliardi, who opposes zoning upgrades, defeated Marasco, who was in favor.  And Pat Fleming — a historic supporter of 40B projects — beat strong anti-40B candidate Al Ramos. Fleming takes the “it’s private property, they can do whatever they want” attitude to land development, while Ramos supported master planning and Smart Growth.

Last word goes to a former selectman, also from the Sun story:

At the Vining Elementary School polls, former Selectman Francis “Fraz” Fraine was also disappointed with the turnout.

“It’s ridiculous,” he said. “You can’t blame the weather. Usually you’ll get around 3,700 coming out at least. This is a political town. What we’re seeing is unbelievable.”

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