Blog: Dermot Cole
Registered non-voters etc.
Published Wednesday, October 7, 2009
•Something does not register. Fifteen years ago, 19,244 people voted in the election when Jim Sampson was re-elected borough mayor. There were allegedly 47,645 registered voters.
On Tuesday, about 16,000 people voted. There are 67,832 registered voters in the borough.
So while we have gained 20,000 "voters," we have lost 3,000 real voters.
The voter rolls have been trimmed somewhat in recent years, though federal law has made it difficult to make adjustments to keep up with our transient population. The federal law is designed to prevent governments from disenfranchising people who might want to vote one of these days.
I can see the reason for limits on the practice of deleting names, but in a state with a high turnover in the population, the lists don't reflect reality.
There were allegedly 71,172 voters here five years ago, so there has been some improvement.
But the numbers are still inflated because it takes very little official contact with the system to be counted as a "voter," even if you never vote.
We need a new term to describe the tens of thousands of people who do not vote. Perhaps they should be known as registered non-voters.
What this means is that the turnout percentages people use to sum up an election are still not a reliable indicator of local interest in elections.
The percentages are nearly irrelevant because the underlying data is inaccurate.
Unfortunately, the number of people who vote is a more reliable indicator. The long-term trends are down, showing a decline in civic participation.
A large percentage of our adult population is uninvolved in the most basic element of local government. This is not a good sign.
In years when the mayor's office is up for grabs, the turnout is somewhat higher. The trend, even in those years, is declining.
The number of voters peaked in the mid-1990s. The mayoral election in 2000 drew 18,108 voters, while in 2003 there were 18,829 people at the polls.
The 2006 mayoral election, in which Jim Whitaker won a second term, was not as closely contested as other races, so even more people stayed away from the polls that year. There were 13,185 voters that year.
This year, with more candidates and more attention, the turnout was higher than in 2006. About 2,500 more voters cast ballots than three years ago.
But the numbers are still far lower than in the mid 1990s, when we didn't have as many people living here.
•On Fort Wainwright, there were 44 voters who cast ballots, out of a total of 4,289 registered voters. On Eielson, there were 24 voters out of 3,151 registered voters. Some people in those precincts may have voted questioned ballots in other areas.
•With about 1,800 absentee and questioned ballots yet to be counted, the Nadine Winters-Josh Lott assembly race remains too close to call.
Winters has a 189-vote lead, 5,849 to 5,660. The votes will be tallied next Tuesday.
Wendy Dominique has a 285-vote lead over Lynette Bergh in a school board race, which is close enough to wait until the final numbers are in before picking a winner.
Other than Hopkins' flip-flop on the bag tax, this was a boring election. I do, however, believe that the impending run-off election will be much better attended. The candidates have some time to wind up the mud-slinging machines.
So between the rise in registrations and the drop in turnout, we have a total of 23,000 missing voters. Maybe we should hire ACORN to help find them.
Leave the "non-voters" alone ... I don't want them diluting my vote. When fewer people vote, my vote has a greater impact.
When it comes to voting, it's my right. To all those non voters, don't bitch when your government screws up. You could be voting the corrupt, bad leadership out of office.
I have to admit wondering more than a few times, just what would election outcomes here look like if we achieved 75%, or even 90%, turn-out of registered voters?
What do the registered voters in our Borough -really- want, other than, apparently, to sit home on the sidelines?
Voting is a privelege and a rite and if people choose to not vote then that is their mistake to make that choice. We don't need the news media printing their names for everyone to see.
Do you
Just let ACORN loose in Fairbanks and that situation will change dramatically,
Kind of like Minnesota's Al Frankin winning by 300 votes.....( AFTER 2 RECOUNTS ) ACORN registered 40,000 .....
Luke's probably on the phone to ACORN ......
The voter rolls need to be purged.Till then the numbers will be wrong.
Mr. Cole beats this drum every year or so. Perhaps the reason why the community is disengaged is because it really doesn't matter who we elect here. After 20 years of living in this so called, "community", to leadership faces change and the corruption continues. The corruption and back-stabbing has been here since the Barnette's arrival, and it will always be here.
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