Low Voter Turnout Throughout Missouri
LEE’S SUMMIT, AUGUST 7, 2012 – Earlier this morning Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan’s press release from Jefferson City predicted that we’d see about 25%of registered voters turn out for the Primaries (or nearly 1,000,000 votes). This afternoon we’re finding that it is closer to 15% in Jackson County and less than 20% statewide.
Missourians will have a chance to vote till 7:00 PM tonight.
As someone that voted early this morning, the old “Chicago Politics” joke keeps coming to mind: Vote early and vote often. Well, it turns out that for all of us who voted today we could look at it as at best we only cast a vote that had four times the political consequence. Since only one in four were expected to turn out.
Now that the early numbers for turnout have been reported, it is at least one out of five; if not as much as one out of six registered voters cast a ballot today. That means we may have actually represented the equivalent of 5 or 6 people for every vote we cast today.
The problem with such a low turnout is that all the polling done leading up to the Primary are less and less accurate and it becomes more difficult to predict who will come out the winner.
On August 4 one of the last polls I saw today, for example, suggested that John Brunner was the most likely candidate to win the Republican opportunity to run against Claire McCaskill in November – but the low turnout may actually prove a good thing for Sarah Steelman whose “Get Out The Vote” effort may have been more successful than others.
Closer to home, here in Jackson County, it puts in play the Missouri’s 5th US Congressional district where Jacob Turk finds himself challenged by the Republican party’s Jerry Nolte and Jason Greene. The Turk campaign has been alerting supporters not to take the election for granted and make sure they felt energized to come out and vote.
As a Naturalized Citizen of the United States, I earned my right to vote in 1992 and I make it a point to exercise my right to vote; what I did not realize is the terrible burden my vote carries – I have to get it right not only for myself, but for the other four to six people who [by their absence] entrusted me to cast the right votes.
I wonder, what is the value placed on such an important right – the right to vote – when so many people just don’t vote?
Respectfully Submitted
The Lee’s Summit Conservative
