A primary reason voters stay home

It wasn’t always this easy.

Voting, I mean. Voting wasn’t always so easy.

During my young political reporting days, the ONLY way to cast a ballot on anything but Election Day required an affidavit of unavailability. That’s where the term “absentee” came from.

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The primary is still three weeks away, yet more than 8,000 Citrus Countians have already voted by mail. That totally boggles my mind. This isn’t a presidential election where decisions are made months in advance. The primary is County Commission, School Board, sheriff — mostly local.

How does a Citrus County voter decide in July who to elect in August?

I’m an Election Day voter for many reasons, tradition among them. More practical, though, is the knowledge that anything can happen to a campaign/candidate right up to voting day. I don’t vote early on the chance that the dynamics of a race may change in the coming weeks.

Yet, early voting is the rage. I forget when I started tracking this, but I’m guessing it was around 2016 or 2018 that early voting started to make up half of the total voter turnout. Unless a race is super close, we can usually guess the winner once early vote results are released Election Night.

So, yes, early voting is super convenient. Oddly, that hasn’t led to more people voting.

I checked voter turnout for every Citrus County primary election since 1988, my first. Turnout for that primary was 36%. In 1990, it was 44%; in ‘92, it was 50%.

We’ll stop there for a minute.

The primary generally attracts half the voter turnout of a general election. There are several likely reasons for this. Chief among them is until recent years, no one was ever elected in the primary. The primary’s historical purpose is to allow Democrats and Republicans to nominate candidates for the general election. Over time, nonpartisan races such as judges were added to the primary ballot, opening it up to all voters.

Still, voters consider the primary Election Light.

How else to explain primary voter turnout of the 30 years? The expansion of early voting coincided with a drop in voter turnout. From 37% in 1994, the turnout dropped or stayed equal until 2020 when it hit 37% again. Republican turnout is higher than Democrat, but it’s still well below 50%.

Voter turnout for the Aug. 20 primary is already at 6.8%. A little higher for Democrats, who tend to favor vote-by-mail more than Republicans. (Never understood the logic of people who don’t trust vote-by-mail yet will give Amazon their secret handshake.)

A few thoughts about the primary voter’s mindset.

— The primary voter is motivated. With voter turnout around 30%, most people are staying home. As a primary voter it’s my responsibility to speak for those too indifferent to show up. My chance to make a difference as a voter is much greater in a primary.

— The primary voter is educated. This hurts someone like Sheriff Mike Prendergast, who is courting voters who DON’T pay attention. The incumbent’s entire unite-by-dividing approach would work very well in a general election; it’s much tougher in a primary when voters don’t miss details.

Conversely, an educated and motivated voter is exactly what Dave Vincent is counting on. Vincent’s support for sheriff continues to swell; logic says, in a primary, that enthusiasm leads to votes.

—To remind JWC readers, this primary is an election for nine races: sheriff, supervisor of elections, superintendent of schools, county judge, three circuit judges, and two County Commission spots. Plus, a four-candidate School Board race is decided in the primary if the overall winner gets more than 50% of the vote (discussion for another day).

So, you see, Aug. 20 is THE election for just about every single significant position in Citrus County (early voting starts Aug. 10). Decisions on this community’s direction take place then, not in November. 

One-third voter turnout for such an event is abysmal. I know we can do better.

It’s only our community at stake. Saddle up, voters.

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