County and municipal elections will be held on May 9 across Texas. Some local races have inspired interest - from a highly contested mayoral race in Greenville to a ballot measure related to alcohol sales in Delta County. But even in those contests, voter participation will likely be low.
KETR spoke with Texas A&M University-Commerce political science instructor Chad King to discuss a few of the reasons why turnout for elections like tomorrow's tends to be poor. Polls will be open in Delta, Fannin, Hopkins, Hunt, Kaufman, Lamar, Rockwall and Wood counties.
Audio transcript
Haslett: Springtime in Texas means beautiful green prairies, the occasional tornado and local elections. If you consider a city or county election to be a snooze-worthy topic, you’re not alone. Voter turnout in Texas is low even in presidential races, so participation in springtime local elections is very low, especially in off years with no statewide-office party primaries.
For example – in Hunt County, the Spring 2013 election drew only 3.8 percent of the 46,000 some-odd registered voters. Put that into baseball terms and you have a batting average of .004. Not exactly cleanup-hitter numbers.
So what happens when people ignore local elections? Texas A&M University-Commerce political science instructor Chad King says that when the electorate is disengaged, elected officials don’t have to worry about what the electorate thinks of their decisions.
King: If the officeholders know that people aren’t going to vote, they’re probably less concerned with representing what the people want, because there’s no punishment for not following the will of the people. I mean if people aren’t going to show up and vote, why would they need to do everything that the people want? If you don’t keep them on track by actually participating, well then, who are they listening to?
Haslett: Municipal and county elections are also nonpartisan, so candidates don’t have the machinery of a political party campaigning and raising awareness. Kings says that hurts turnout. Also, there’s a correlation between voting and demographics like education level and income. If a community tends to have less money or education overall, they’re also less likely to go to the polls.
King: The more educated you are, the theory goes, the more likely you’re going to be able to make distinctions between candidates, understand why it’s meaningful for you to vote, and then socio-economically, the more likely you are to have the time and the ability to take to get registered to vote, because that’s a big eliminator of people actually voting, and to be able to see why you should show up and vote, to see a difference between the candidates.
