Sometimes you just need to show up.
I just spent a week in Louisiana. Between Friday and Thursday, we traveled from Tate County to Shreveport then across the state to Alexandria, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans and then back to Mississippi on Thursday.
One of the hot topics in Shreveport was the Caddo Parish sheriff election. On November 18 a runoff election was decided by one vote. 43,000 or so votes were cast, mostly by living voters. A recount resulted in the same margin. Of course, the guy who was one vote short filed a challenge in court. The court ordered a new election. One reason cited was that the number of ballots cast by dead people
One vote, out of 43,000 cast.
There’s a pending appeal, but one single vote has so far decided the outcome. Newspapers in the area decried the low turnout of a little bit less than 40% of eligible registered voters.
Speaking of low turnouts, in June of 2022, 15.5% of eligible voters showed up for a special election on a school bond issue in Tate County. 1861 voters out of 11,995 eligible showed up to vote on a $7 million school construction bond.
But wait! On November 28, ten days after the low-turnout election in Louisiana, there was a runoff for Tate County School Board District One.
136 votes were cast. 136 people out of a total 2369 registered voters in that district. That translates to a measly 5.74% of registered voters who cared enough to spend 10 minutes or less at the polls. 136 votes.
Fifteen days later, the Tate County School District posted to Facebook that the school lunch policy regarding payment would be enforced. Four days after the original posting, that announcement had 120 shares and more than 90 comments, almost all of them expressions of some degree of harrumphing high dudgeon over school board policy.
There’s an old saying that 90% of success in life is just showing up. More than 90% of School District One voters chose not to show up a couple of weeks ago when they could have had an impact on who will make school board policy.
I wonder how many of the Facebook commenters can be counted among the stalwart 136 who showed up November 28?
After all, if the Louisiana dead have the wherewithal to cast a vote, surely those with the strength to log in to social media can find a way to struggle to the Mississippi polls?
