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Politics & Government

Low Participation is the Norm for April's Municipal Elections

More voters tend to head to the polls for general elections.

While a attracts attention, recent history makes a strong turnout unlikely for and other municipal elections on April 5. 

In last year’s general municipal elections, only 10.5 percent of registered voters made it to the voting booth county-wide, according to St. Charles County Election Authority records. O’Fallon voters turned out at a slightly lower rate, with 10.4 percent on most city-wide issues. Only Ward 5 beat out the county average with 14.6 percent of registered voters casting ballots for city councilman.

Contrast those numbers with last November’s general election, where 52.14 percent of St. Charles’ County's 242,357 registered voters went to the polls. Or with the 2008 presidential race, in which 77.82 percent of voters cast 189,682 ballots, a high watermark among available data.

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Professor Joseph Cernik teaches political science and public administration at  in St. Charles. He said that kind of disparity in voter participation isn’t uncommon between the local and state or federal levels. People who turn out for municipal elections are regulars, he said. They tend to fit a profile.

“You expect to see an older population, that’s pretty normal,” Cernik said. He’s done the exit polling and said he also noticed “above average knowledge of local issues” in municipal voters. But even with special referendums, such as O’Fallon’s pending smoking bans, Cernik doubts much more of the electorate will be stirred to action.

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“People that vote on local politics are coming, anyway,” he said. “It doesn’t usually have to do with passion. Because a given issue’s on the ballot, that may sway a few people, but you tend to find consistency.”

Casey Whalen is an exception. The 22-year-old is from O'Fallon is  an undergraduate in psychology and education at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Though she doesn’t vote in every election, she said she has in the past and will on April 5—mostly against the proposed smoking ban. Whalen thinks the media blitz surrounding national and state political campaigns is the reason voters actually turn out.

“It’s just the amount of money people put into ad campaigns for presidential elections. Just because there's not a lot of money involved [in local elections], there's no advertising or propaganda,” she said.

St. Charles County voters in municipal elections haven’t recently approached the five-year high of 15.12 percent voter participation set in 2007. The rate was 10.7 percent in 2008 and 11.47 percent in 2009.

Mary Gates, 55, an O’Fallon speech-language pathologist working in the Francis Howell district, said she also votes sporadically in local elections, but makes education a priority. According to her, Cernik’s demography sounds about right.

“I'm kind of hit and miss, but whenever there’s something that has to do with a school district, raising tax levies or bonds or something like that, there’s always a huge older contingent—and I guess I’m starting to hit that—who come out,” she said laughing.

Gates’ daughter Emily, 23, a graduate student in counseling at Lindenwood University. She said she researched the issues that were important to her prior to the 2008 presidential election—big picture issues like wars, federal spending, abortion rights. But like most, Emily said local elections just don’t grab her attention.

“I’m very uninformed. I guess I see the signs, but I don't pay attention because I really don’t know what any of the positions are,” she said.

She’s in the majority. Still, Cernik thinks there are advantages to being a local political activist.

“Because so few people do turn out, it's amazing that just a few people can actually have a voice,” he said. “And it's not always going to come from elections. In my class, I teach how to actually send e-mails to local officials and state legislatures.”

Cernik's advice to voters is to learn the issues surrounding your city.  

“Because so few people may be following it, it's surprising; a small group can actually have an impact and be heard because they’re the only people paying attention.”

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